Catalogue

This document is part of the Abiquo walkthrough and it describes the Catalogue.
The previous page in the walkthrough is Virtual datacenters and the next page is Tenants and users.

The Catalogue is where the Admin will make it easy for the cloud users to work with the infrastructure that they are providing. In the Catalogue, the Admin will provide the VM templates for creating VMs and blueprints for creating virtual appliance (VApp) configurations.

In each private cloud datacenter, the Admin should configure the Catalogue based on an NFS Repository. Then Admins can upload templates as OVAs, template disks, or ISO disks, for example. The Service Catalogue in public cloud for templates is a cache of template details with links to the original provider templates.

For Service Providers the Catalogue enables the provider to offer appliances and applications to their customer. For Enterprises the Catalogue provides a central, controlled image repository so that only approved images can be deployed onto the infrastructure.

Click here to show/hide the task: Download sample templates

Abiquo supplies sample templates in a Remote Repository hosted on Amazon S3. Download some of these templates for testing.

On the Catalog tab select the data center.
Click the + Add button on the right hand side and select Create from remote repository

The Abiquo Official Repository should have been added as default (http://abiquo-repository.abiquo.com/ovfindex.xml).
Select the templates and click Download to save them to the local datacenter Catalogue

Note that by default the Cloud Admin has the privilege to Manage repository (to add and delete remote repositories) and Admins have access to the Catalogue and the privilege to Download VM templates from remote repository.

The Cloud Admin can upload VM templates from the local filesystem and may also allow Enterprise Admins to upload their own templates to the Catalogue for their users. If the enterprise is a reseller, the Cloud Admin can allow them to share templates with their tenants.

Click here to show/hide the task: Upload a custom VM template

To upload a custom VM template:

On the Catalogue tab select the data center
Click the + Add button and select the option to Create from OVA
Select the OVA file. Abiquo imports OVAs created in VMware. The OVA shoulld contain a single virtual system and the disk format should be compatible with Abiquo. See Template compatibility table
After you upload the OVA, edit the template as required. On the Advanced tab, check that the Operating system is set correctly

The template will be uploaded to your Catalogue and can be used to deploy VMs within a virtual appliance.
Note: Your Appliance Manager remote service must be correctly configured to allow disk uploads. Browser upload uses HTTPS protocols and larger disk files may require a different process.

Users can create clones of their VM disks as instance templates. In private cloud, instances are stored with the master templates in the Catalogue.

A template and clones of VM disks created from the template (instance templates)

In private cloud datacenters, Cloud Admins can set allocation limits to ensure that no single enterprise uses all the repository space. The platform meters Repository usage and you can bill each tenant for it.

For customers running multiple Abiquo datacenters, Abiquo has a template mobility feature that can export from a private cloud datacenter to another datacenter and supported public cloud providers.

In public cloud regions, the Catalogue enables you to filter and search for public cloud images. It also allows you to import the image details into the Abiquo public cloud region Catalogue, which is a cache of template definitions. Here you can modify the way that Abiquo will present the public cloud templates to your users and, for example, restrict the hardware profiles that users can work with. Users can easily find and deploy the approved templates cached in the Catalogue. Users can also create instance templates to clone the disks of their VMs running in the public cloud region.

In public cloud the Catalogue imports the details of templates from the provider and links to the provider's disk files

In both private and public cloud, Admins can also create application blueprints called virtual appliance specs by saving the configuration of a group of VMs to the Catalogue. The user can then select to the blueprint to automatically create a new virtual appliance directly from the blueprint.

The user can select a blueprint to create a complete configuration