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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

  1. If your VM is deployed

    1. 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

    2. If your VM does not support hot-reconfigure, select the VM and go to the stop button.

      1. If your guest supports graceful shutdown with guest tools, select the Shut down option

      2. Or connect to the VM and shut it down directly

      3. Or if your VM is prepared for a hard shutdown, select Power off

  2. On the VM icon, select the options menu, and select Edit. Full configuration details are given below

  3. After you make your changes click Save. The platform will reconfigure the VM. 

  4. 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.

Configure a VM with General information before you deploy it

Edit virtual machine General information part 2

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.
For example, another user created two VMs from a template named TEMPLATE. The VMs will be named TEMPLATE and TEMPLATE (1). Your next two VMs will be TEMPLATE (2) and TEMPLATE (3). If the other user later deletes their second VM, your next VM will be TEMPLATE (1).

(warning) 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.

The platform powers on VMs in ascending alphanumeric name order. So 1_WebServer will start to power on before 2_Database. But there is no guarantee that the VMs will finish starting up in the same order.

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.
The hostname will be the VM name (format ABQ-uuid) or another Abiquo identifier in the format ABQ-id. The domain will be the domain value of the private or external networks that the VM belongs to, or localdomain.
After you deploy the VM, if you change the value in the operating system, then when the platform synchronizes with the provider, it will obtain the new value.

Owner

The enterprise and user that owns the VM

Guest initial password

Generate an initial root or Administrator password for the VM and email it to the owner. The administrator can configure this setting for the VM template and you can change it before you deploy the VM. See Guest setup

CPU

The number of CPUs. Your VM must be undeployed, stopped, or use hot add/reconfigure. Requires the Edit VM details privilege. The platform will check your allocation limits in the virtual datacenter and enterprise.
Then when you deploy or restart the VM, the platform will check the number of CPUs available in the hypervisors or cloud provider.

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 MB or GB. Your VM must be undeployed, stopped, or use hot add/reconfigure. Requires the privilege to Edit VM details. When you enter this number, the platform will check your allocation limits in the virtual datacenter and enterprise.
And when you deploy or restart the VM, the platform will check the amount of RAM available in the hypervisors or cloud provider.
Read-only value when using static hardware profiles.

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

  • Enter the URL for the template's icon. This must be an accessible URL with a public or routable IP address, and not localhost or 127.0.0.1.
    It may be hosted on the API server. It should use the same protocol as the server to avoid mixed content errors.

  • We recommend square images with a size of 128x128 pixels and a transparent background. The compatible image formats are PNG, JPG, and GIF.

  • This icon will have priority over the VM template's icon and the platform default 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.
You can use the Increase/Decrease buttons for hardware profiles that are not dynamic

Created

Date and time that the VM was created

Known since

Date and time that the VM was registered in the platform

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 to the VM is not available if the VM is not deployed.

Remote access password

Deprecated.
To open a RDP remote access window to your VM from the console button on the control panel, you must enter this password.
By default the platform will generate a random password for your VM. To change the password, enter a maximum of 8 characters
that are alphanumeric characters only, i.e. [a..z][A..Z][0..9]. 

Show password

Deprecated.
Mark the checkbox to display the remote access password.

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

Create a VM backup

See Create a VM backup

Backup results

To display backup results:

  1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

  2. Edit VM

  3. Go to Backup → Backup results

The results shown may vary depending on your datacenter's backup system. Backups with a status of done or completed will have a Restore link enabled in the Action column. 

Backup results

Restore a backup

The administrator may allow users to restore their own backups.

Privileges: Restore virtual machine backups

To restore a VM backup:

  1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

  2. Edit a VM

  3. Go to Backups → Backup results

  4. In the Latest backups section, in the Action column on the right, click the Restore link Restore a backup

To display the details of the restore, in the Latest backups list, click on the backup. 

After the platform finishes the restore, it will display a status, such as done or failed.

After you restore a backup, the VM disks are under the control of the backup system, not the platform. So when you undeploy after restoring a VM, the platform will display a warning popup and delete and remove the VM's disks.

If your environment permits, you may request more than one restore of the same backup. If the status of the restore request is success or failed, Abiquo will reactivate the Restore link and you can click it to request a new restore of the same backup.

Backup events

For users the backup feature will produce the events described on the Events table page in the Virtual machine section, under METADATA_MODIFIED and RESTORE_BACKUP.

To display VM backup events:

  1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

  2. Edit the VM

  3. Go to Backup → Events

This page will display events from backup integrations. 

Backup events

To view the details of an event, click on the event.

Create a manual backup now

If your backup system supports immediate backups, you can request them at any time.

To request a manual backup of a VM now:

  1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

  2. Edit the VM and go to Backup

  3. At the bottom of the Backup tab, click the Backup now button

The platform will request an immediate backup of the VM or a VM snapshot

Configure bootstrap scripts

Before you begin:

  1. Create your VM with a template that is compatible with cloud-init version 0.7.9 or above, or cloudbase-init, or a similar system

  2. In private cloud, the platform will create an ISO disk for Configuration drive

To add a VM bootstrap configuration or script in private or public cloud:

  1. Create or edit a VM, and go to Bootstrap script

  2. Paste your configuration or script in the Bootstrap script text box

  3. Continue to configure the VM or click Save to finish

Edit a VM and add a bootstrap script

Notes about bootstrap in private cloud

  1. If the user does not enter the FQDN on the General tab when editing the VM, the platform will try to set the FQDN using the name or ID attribute of the VM, and the domain of the VM's networks, or the localhost domain

  2. If your datacenter does not use DHCP, the VM can also get its network configuration from cloud-init, so you do not need to configure the network or allow access to the VM

  3. Abiquo uses the ConfigDrive DataSource for cloud-init. Reference: https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/datasources/configdrive.html

Notes about startup scripts in AWS

  1. In Amazon Web Services you must always select a guest setup option

  2. In AWS, for Windows, depending on the template and its guest setup option, the script format is:

    1. cloudbase_init: cloud-init or shellscript

    2. ec2launch and ec2config: you must have the following format

      1. batch script: put a <script> tag at the start, and a </script> tag at the end of the script

      2. powershell script: put a <powershell>tag at the start, and a </powershell> tag at the end of the script

    3. ec2launch v2: use YAML. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2-windows-user-data.html#user-data-yaml-scripts.
      If your script format is invalid, AWS will try ec2launch and ec2config format. See: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2-windows-user-data.html

Notes about startup scripts in OCI

  1. The Windows templates provided by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure include cloudbase-init.
    See https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/releasenotes/changes/595afbb7-de0c-4934-8074-5b1ed6be1b56/

Related pages

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:

  1. Go to Virtual datacenters

  2. Edit the VM and go to Firewalls

  3. In the Firewall policies list, select the firewall

  4. Click Save or continue editing the VM as required

Select a firewall policy for a VM

Troubleshooting:

  • 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

  • If your provider's default firewall policy does not display, you may need to synchronize your virtual datacenter or firewall policies before you continue

  • 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

  • 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

  1. Edit the VM and go to Load balancers

  2. Select the load balancer from the list

Select a load balancer to assign the VM to the load balancer

Related pages

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:

  1. Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters

  2. Edit a VM

  3. Go to Monitoring Enable VM monitoring and select metrics to display

  4. Select the Fetch metrics data checkbox. This will retrieve all metrics while the VM is deployed

  5. Select from the available options, for example, for AWS offers Detailed or Basic monitoring.

  6. 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.

VM monitoring on Google Cloud Platfrom

Display metrics for a VM

To display and filter metrics for a VM:

  1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances

  2. Open the virtual appliance

  3. On the VM icon → click the graph metrics symbol VM icons with metrics symbol

  4. The metrics panel will open and you can dynamically filter and select which metrics to display.  Display and filter VM metrics

To update the display of a metric, click the round-arrow refresh button.

To configure the display of the metric:

  1. Select the funnel filter button

  2. Set the following as required

    1. Granularity, which is how often the metric is sampled

    2. Statistic, which determines how the raw values will be processed over time

    3. Last period, which is how long the display will look behind at the processed data

    4. 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.

      1. To view metric dimensions, click Get dimensions. Select a dimension.

      2. If no dimension is selected, the default value is the average of all dimensions

  3. 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.

Virtual appliance monitoring view for VM metrics

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:

  1. Go to Virtual datacenters and edit a VM that is not deployed

  2. Go to Variables

  3. Enter a Key and Value

    1. The length of these can be up to 255 characters each 

  4. Click Add

    Edit a VM and add variables

  5. Add more variables as required

  6. 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

  7. 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

  • On the cloud-init ISO, which has the label config-2.

  • The variables file is openstack/latest/vm-variables.rc

Private

Hypervisor tools

On ESXi, run this command on the guest to get the value of a variable:
vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.abiquo.<variable-name>"

Private

Hypervisor tools

For vCloud Director, hypervisor tools does not support variables

Public

Cloud-init

The variables are stored in the /opt/abiquo-env.rc file

Amazon

Cloudbase-init
ec2launchv2
ec2lanch
ec2config

On Windows, the variables are stored in the
C:\ProgramData\Abiquo\abiquo-env.rc file

Azure

Cloud-init

On Windows, according to the Azure documentation on custom data

Custom data is placed in
%SYSTEMDRIVE%\AzureData\CustomData.bin
as a binary file, but it is not processed. If you wish to process
this file, you will need to build a custom image, and write code to process the CustomData.bin..

On Linux, use cloud-init to read the variables from custom data.

Display VM events

To display VM events:

  1. Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances

  2. Open a virtual appliance and edit a VM

  3. 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. 

VM events

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

  1. Edit the VM

  2. Go to Extra charges

  3. Click the + add button

  4. Select an Extra charge with a cost code

    1. For an extra charge a cost code with Usage user licenses unit, enter the number of Users for the VM

  5. 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

VM Extra charges

Related pages

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