Abiquo 4.5 introduces the following features:
Resize disks in Action plans
Abiquo 4.5 includes a new action to resize a disk as part of an action plan. You just need to select the disk, and supply the amount of disk space to add, and the units. You will need an appropriate VM template to use this feature. The platform will only increase the size of the disk; it will not perform other actions such as modifying the disk partitions. For more details of how to use the Action plans feature for VM automation, see Manage Action Plans. For more details of how to work with cloud automation, see Control View - Alerts and Control View - Cloud Bursting
Remove NICs with hot reconfigure
In Abiquo 4.5 users can remove NICs with hot configure, whereas in previous versions this functionality was blocked in the user interface. In Abiquo, administrators can edit VM templates and activate hot reconfigure if the OS and template support hot reconfigure. See Modify a VM template#Advanced tab.
Tenant hierarchy management
In Abiquo 4.5, through the Abiquo API you can now retrieve the tenants under a reseller or a key node. For more information about how to create a tenant hierarchy and resellers, see
Greater control of concurrent operations
The platform uses configuration properties to control the number of concurrent operations to: hypervisor, provider, device, backup manager. See the "openSession" properties at Abiquo Configuration Properties#virtualfactory. For a detailed explanation, see Control the number of concurrent operations
Improvements to VM search
Abiquo 4.5 introduces some useful improvements to the Virtual machines tabs in both the Infrastructure view and the Cloud or Virtual datacenters view. See Administer VMs in infrastructure and Manage Virtual Machines - Display all VMs. Sort and filter VMs by Label and FQDN: it is now even easier to find VMs, because you can sort and filter by the VM friendly name and fully qualified domain name on the Virtual machines tabs. Hypervisor shortcut link: if a VM entity contains a machine link, users with infrastructure privileges can click through from the Hypervisor column to the server where the VM is deployed.
Maintenance window notices
Abiquo 4.5 enables you to configure a scheduled maintenance window. When you activate the window, the platform will display a status popup for users when they log in. The platform will also display a maintenance link at the bottom of the screen. To open the maintenance popup, the user can click on the link. Maintenance can have a status of: scheduled, in progress, or finished that the platform determines from the dates you enter in the Configuration view on the Dashboard tab. See Configure maintenance notices
Add default template icons by operating system types
Administrators can now configure the UI with the default icons to display for the operating systems used by VM templates. You can simply enter the OS type name and the link to the icon in the user interface configuration file. We have loaded some default files in the Abiquo default theme. See Configure default VM template icons by operating system and Configure Abiquo UI.
Cookie message and privacy policy
In Abiquo 4.5 you can add a Cookie message and configure the link to your privacy policy. Abiquo only uses cookies to improve the user experience, for example, to record that the user is logged in or to record that the user does not wish to display a popup again. See Configure a cookie message and privacy policy.
Save license costs with VMware DRS rules
Customers may have DRS rules to ensure that certain operating systems run on defined hosts, in order to save on licence costs. Administrators create a cluster VM group and Abiquo adds the VMs to the appropriate group during deploy. Abiquo selects the group based on the group naming convention and the operating system set in the VM template. Note that this feature is for use at deploy time and the platform won't add captured VMs to a group and it won't check the group during the reconfigure process. The administrator can enable this feature by setting the properties for the required operating system types. For configuration details, see DRS rules for license affinity.
Support for new public cloud regions
Abiquo 4.5 adds support for the AWS regions of London (eu-west-2), Canada (ca-central-1), Paris (eu-west-3), Seoul (ap-northeast-2), Mumbai (ap-south-1), and Ohio (us-east-2). Abiquo 4.5 also adds support for Azure RM in China, which requires different credentials (as does AWS China). Microsoft has updated the ARM regions in Canada and Korea, which are now compatible with Abiquo.
Abiquo has custom integrations with some public cloud providers, such as Amazon AWS EC2 and VPC, Azure ARM, and vCloud Director clouds. The ARM and AWS integrations map Abiquo entities to public cloud entities as shown in the following diagram. Abiquo synchronizes with all supported public cloud providers to onboard virtual resources, either at the virtual datacenter or regional level. As shown in the above diagram, Abiquo onboards ARM virtual networks and AWS VPCs and their associated resources into Abiquo virtual datacenters.
The Hybrid tab of the Home dashboard view can display public cloud billing information, including latest bills and estimated bills. For details of the dashboard widgets, see Hybrid and for configuration details, see Display cloud provider billing data. For details of the public cloud features that Abiquo supports in these providers, see AWS features table and Azure ARM features table.
Release tenant resources in public cloud
The platform now enables you to easily manage the offboarding of tenants with an option to delete resources in the platform only, while they remain intact in the cloud provider. When you delete the tenant's VDCs, you can select the option to delete them in the platform only. The platform will automatically delete the associated resources in the platform only, including public IPs, firewalls, load balancers, and so on.
Changes to public cloud synchronization
In Abiquo 4.5, there have been two changes to public cloud synchronization. First, Abiquo now differentiates resources that have been deleted in the provider by displaying their details in light gray text. For example, the following screenshot shows some external networks deleted in the vCloud provider.
Secondly, Abiquo maintains configurations assigned to undeployed VMs in public cloud regions. In previous versions, the synchronization process would ensure that the platform exactly matched the public cloud provider. This included removing configurations such as public IPs and load balancers from VMs that were not yet deployed. These elements would remain in the virtual datacenter but not registered in the VM. This is helpful for any users who may be in the process of configuring VMs when a synchronization is requested.
Group vCloud Director regions by endpoint
In Abiquo 4.5, vCloud Director regions can be grouped by endpoint. This is an extension of the Abiquo 4.4 feature to group regions by provider. It is configured with the same UI settings that allow Administrators to work with groups of regions or specific regions when allowing tenants access to a provider, and when creating, editing, viewing scopes, and so on.
New REST API documentation site
Abiquo 4.5 introduces new API documentation. The API reference documentation will be automatically generated from the source code. The resource documentation now includes more information about REST links. The new link is https://wiki.abiquo.com/api/latest
Extended vCloud Director integration
Abiquo has been working hard to consolidate and extend our integration with vCloud Director. As in previous versions, Abiquo onboards vApps from vCloud Director as VDCs where you can create VMs using templates from the vCloud Director template repository. You can now hot reconfigure VMs if their vCloud Director templates and operating systems allow it, and the platform will now use the VMXNET3 ethernet driver by default for vCloud Director. Users can work with VM templates with multiple disks, although the platform still represents these as a single disk with the total size of all disks. When you onboard a VM, the VM is not linked in the platform to its template in the vCloud registry. So you need to create an instance (clone VM disks into the registry), which Abiquo will then automatically link to its VM template, to make it available to deploy. So users can then undeploy and redeploy the onboarded VM.
When importing templates into the platform, the private checkbox filters to display templates in the same organization, and the public checkbox filters to display templates in other organizations. Abiquo onboards and synchronizes private and external networks, although you must create static routes and NAT configurations directly in vCloud Director. In vCloud Director, when you create an external network that can support load balancers (direct or routed, with a connection to an Edge), you must create a static IP pool for load balancers, which represents the number of load balancers that users can create in this network. If there is no static IP pool, Abiquo will not onboard the network.
As in the previous version of Abiquo, you can onboard existing Edge firewalls from vCloud Director as Classic firewalls in Abiquo. In vCloud Director, load balancers can span more than one vApp, and Abiquo 4.5 supports load balancers that span Abiquo VDCs. When you create a load balancer for vCloud Director, you must select a "public address" on an external network connected to the Edge (meaning external to the OrgVDC or external routed networks). The platform does not support private subnets for load balancers in vCloud Director, or NSX-Edge Compact or fenced vApps. You can onboard compatible load balancers. See VMware vCloud Director integration
Dynamic hardware profiles and cost codes for hardware profiles
In private cloud, dynamic hardware profiles support different values of CPU and/or RAM, so they enable administrators to create fewer hardware profiles. Administrators can now set prices for hardware profiles at the platform level (instead of at the cloud location level) by assigning cost codes to hardware profiles. Dynamic hardware profiles have one or more dynamic attributes (CPU and/or RAM). Users can set values of CPU and/or RAM when they create or edit VMs with dynamic hardware profiles. See Hardware profiles and Pricing view.
Require a datastore tier for VM template disks
In private cloud VM templates, the administrator can require the user to specify a datastore tier for one or more disks when they create a VM. To require users to select a datastore tier for a VM template disk in private cloud: Edit a template disk and mark the checkbox to require the user to specify a datastore tier for a VM template disk.
Resynchronization of captured VMs after physical machine changes
When you delete a physical machine, the platform will put deployed VMs of all types in the “Not allocated” state, without changing the state of the VMs on the hypervisor. If you later add the physical machine again or upgrade to using clusters as physical machines, the platform will automatically update all VMs from the hypervisor, returning captured VMs on the hypervisor to a deployed state. In the API these resynchronized VMs will have the same ID and URL as before. Note: VMs deployed from a template or instance can be recreated by deploying from that template or instance. However, as captured VMs don’t have a template, it is important to create an instance if you wish to recreate them on a new hypervisor. Remember that Abiquo’s V2V and Export features may help you to deploy on a different hypervisor type, or export to public cloud.
Main menu icon with external links
In Abiquo v4.5.2+, to enable users to easily open external links, configure Abiquo to display an additional icon in the header menu. The external links menu will open from the icon. Each external link will display for specific role IDs. Abiquo will only display the external links button if the user's role has at least one allowed link. For configuration instructions, see Add role based external links to the main menu.
Filter by template publisher in Microsoft ARM
Azure has a very large number of templates and template publishers, which means it may take a considerable amount of time to perform template operations, such as listing templates or taking snapshots. To improve performance, when importing templates from Microsoft Azure, Abiquo administrators can now filter by publishers. The system administrator can load the predefined publishers using Abiquo configuration properties. See Import public cloud templates.