This page describes how to configure VMs in detail. Before you read this page, you may like to work through Manage virtual machines to help you get started working with VMs. After you add your VMs to a virtual appliance, you can configure the VMs before deployment or reconfigure after deployment. Each of these configuration topics is also available as a separate page.
Prepare to configure a VM
To prepare to configure a VM do these steps:
Privileges: Edit virtual appliance details
If your VM is deployed
If your VM supports hot-reconfigure (in private cloud on VMware hypervisors, in public cloud, see provider features tables), you may configure when powered on
If your VM does not support hot-reconfigure, select the VM and go to the stop button.
If your guest supports graceful shutdown with guest tools, select the Shut down option
Or connect to the VM and shut it down directly
Or if your VM is prepared for a hard shutdown, select Power off
On the VM icon, select the options menu, and select Edit. Full configuration details are given below
After you make your changes click Save. The platform will reconfigure the VM.
Deploy or power on the VM as appropriate.
Infrastructure updates
The periodic infrastructure check will detect direct changes to the VMs (CPU, RAM and hard disk) and register these changes in platform statistics and accounting, as well as on the VM general configuration page.
General configuration
This section describes how to edit the General information of a VM before or after you deploy the VM. This section focuses on private cloud.
The DVD functionality has been replaced with the ISO functionality. To add an ISO disk to a VM, add it to a VM template, and then attach the template disk to the VM.
Field | Description |
|---|---|
UUID | The unique identifier of the VM |
Name | The name of the VM, which defaults to the name of the VM template. If the provider does not support duplicate names, e.g. vCenter, Abiquo will add a number in parentheses after the name.
The platform powers on VMs in ascending alphanumeric name order. So |
Fully qualified domain name | Optionally, enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the VM. You can edit this value before you deploy the VM. If you don't enter a FQDN, the platform will automatically generate one. |
Owner | The enterprise and user that owns the VM |
Guest initial password | Generate an initial |
CPU | The number of CPUs. Your VM must be undeployed, stopped, or use hot add/reconfigure. Requires the |
Cores per socket | The number of cores per socket. The number of CPUs must be divisible by the number of cores per socket. |
RAM | The amount of RAM. Select units, such as |
SSH user / password | The default user and password from the VM template |
Description | A description of the VM. The platform copies the default value from the VM template |
Icon |
|
Provider ID | The identifier of the VM in the hypervisor or cloud provider. This ID is available after you deploy the VM |
Hardware profile | If your provider uses hardware profiles, select a hardware profile for the VM. |
Created | Date and time that the VM was created |
Known since | Date and time that the VM was registered in the platform |
If you try to rename a VM to a name that already exists in a provider that does not support duplicate names, then the platform will return the hypervisor error.VM attributes that were removed in Abiquo 6.1.2
Enable remote access | Remote access is always available on deployed VMs. |
Remote access | Deprecated. |
Remote access password | Deprecated. |
Show password | Deprecated. |
VM keymap | Deprecated. The keymap selector was only available for VNC with ESXi |
Configure network
Configure storage
Configure VM backups
Create a manual backup now
Configure a VM backup
Configure bootstrap scripts
Assign firewalls
Abiquo supports firewall policies that are similar to security groups in private cloud with network managers, and in public cloud providers that support security groups, such as AWS and Azure.
If your provider offers firewall policies, first create them in your virtual datacenters, then assign firewall policies to your VMs.
Privileges: Assign firewall
To assign a firewall from the virtual datacenter to a VM:
-
Go to Virtual datacenters
-
Edit the VM and go to Firewalls
-
In the Firewall policies list, select the firewall
-
Click Save or continue editing the VM as required
Troubleshooting:
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If you cannot assign more firewall policies, check your cloud provider's limit. For example, for AWS, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_SecurityGroups.html#VPCSecurityGroups
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If your provider's default firewall policy does not display, you may need to synchronize your virtual datacenter or firewall policies before you continue
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If an expected firewall policy does not display, for example, a firewall policy that you recently created, you may need to wait for the firewall policy to propagate through the provider's API because of eventual consistency
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You can remove the default firewall when editing a VM. However, if the provider requires a firewall and you do not supply another one, the platform will assign the default firewall again.
Assign load balancers
To assign a VM to a load balancer:
Privileges: Assign load balancers
Edit the VM and go to Load balancers
Select the load balancer from the list
Related pages
Create load balancer policies at the virtual datacenter level: Manage load balancers
Configure metrics
This section describes how to work with VM monitoring and metrics
The platform may automatically enable metrics for all VMs. If you have the privilege to Manage virtual machine monitoring and it is configured in your virtual datacenter, you can enable the option to Fetch metrics data to get built-in metrics from the hypervisor or public cloud region, as well as any custom metrics defined for your VM.
Enable VM monitoring and metrics
To enable VM monitoring and metrics:
Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters
Edit a VM
Go to Monitoring
Select the Fetch metrics data checkbox. This will retrieve all metrics while the VM is deployed
Select from the available options, for example, for AWS offers Detailed or Basic monitoring.
Select the individual metrics you would like to display for your VM. The functionality and list of available metrics depend on the underlying virtualization technology and the platform configuration.
The abq-cpu_usage and the abq-ram_usage metrics are Abiquo standardized metrics. They show the CPU usage and RAM usage as a percentage (not a hundredth of a percent as for CPU on ESXi).
The platform will always retrieve all metrics, so you can change the metrics to display at any time. And you can use any metric for alarms and alerts, even if you do not display it. You may need to wait a short time for the first metrics to load.
Display metrics for a VM
To display and filter metrics for a VM:
Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances
Open the virtual appliance
On the VM icon → click the graph metrics symbol
The metrics panel will open and you can dynamically filter and select which metrics to display.
To update the display of a metric, click the round-arrow refresh button.
To configure the display of the metric:
Select the funnel filter button
Set the following as required
Granularity, which is how often the metric is sampled
Statistic, which determines how the raw values will be processed over time
Last period, which is how long the display will look behind at the processed data
Metric dimensions for metrics with more than one element, such as multiple hard disks, you can display metric dimensions, which are metrics for separate elements.
To view metric dimensions, click Get dimensions. Select a dimension.
If no dimension is selected, the default value is the average of all dimensions
Click Accept to save the values.
To view the exact metric values in a call-out box, mouse over the metric graph line.
To create a highlight point, click on the metric graph line.
To simultaneously view the data for more than one VM, in the virtual appliance go to the Monitoring section.
Configure variables
Add VM variables
Before you deploy a VM, you can set guest variables to pass user data to your VM. This functionality uses cloud-init and requires appropriate templates. In private cloud, the templates must have the guest setup flag set to cloud init. The administrator can add default variables for the VM template.
This functionality is available through the API. The platform stores variables in the VirtualMachine variables attribute, which is a dictionary of keys and values. See “Update a virtual machine” in VirtualMachinesResource
You can modify VM variables before you deploy the VM
Check your cloud providers' documentation for their recommendations about confidential information in variables
To add VM variables:
Go to Virtual datacenters and edit a VM that is not deployed
Go to Variables
Enter a Key and Value
The length of these can be up to 255 characters each
Click Add
Add more variables as required
To delete a variable click the trash can symbol beside the Key. To edit the Value of a variable, click the pencil edit button beside the Value
To apply changes to variables, and other changes to the VM, click Save
Read guest variables
The location of the variable will depend on the method of guest setup that you are using for your VM.
Here are some general guidelines.
Cloud | Method | Variable location |
|---|---|---|
Private | Cloud-init |
|
Private | Hypervisor tools | On ESXi, run this command on the guest to get the value of a variable: |
Private | Hypervisor tools | For vCloud Director, hypervisor tools does not support variables |
Public | Cloud-init | The variables are stored in the |
Amazon | Cloudbase-init | On Windows, the variables are stored in the |
Azure | Cloud-init | On Windows, according to the Azure documentation on custom data
On Linux, use cloud-init to read the variables from custom data. |
Display VM events
To display VM events:
Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances
Open a virtual appliance and edit a VM
Go to Events
To display the detail of an event, click on the event.
To sort events by a column, click on the column header.
Edit VM cost codes
To assign extra charges with cost codes to a VM:
Privileges: View virtual machine extra charges, Manage virtual machine extra charges
Edit the VM
Go to Extra charges
Click the + add button
Select an Extra charge with a cost code
For an extra charge a cost code with
Usage user licensesunit, enter the number of Users for the VM
After you finish editing the VM, click Save
You cannot change extra charges with cost codes that are inherited from the hardware profile or template
Related pages
Definition of Abiquo concepts in myCloud view
Introduction to working with VMs in Manage virtual machines