Control View v44 v44

To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the platform has Control features that include monitoring alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and vertical and horizontal autoscaling. To configure these features go to Control view and then select the Alert or Action plans tab. These features may depend on the configuration of VM monitoring and metrics and Cloud Alarms v44 v44, so you may like to set these up first. You should also create scaling groups for your individual VMs as described below.

Basic control and scaling concepts

Alarms

An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem. 

Alerts

Alerts enable you to configure notifications or actions for the VMs in a virtual appliance. Alerts are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Abiquo alerts can trigger action plans.

Action plans

A sequence of actions to perform on a virtual appliance. An action plan is run by a trigger.

Trigger

A trigger is an alert or a schedule that will run the action plan, for example, during times of increased demand. 

Scaling group

For horizontal autoscaling, create a scaling group for a VM with rules to define how the platform should scale it out. You can then include scaling operations in an action plan.

Vertical scaling

Vertical scaling means adding more resources to an existing VM, for example, boosting your CPU and or RAM capacity.

Horizontal scaling

Horizontal scaling means deploying more VMs when you need more resources. 

Create Alerts and Alarms

You can configure alerts, with their associated alarms, and action plans under Control view. In order to create an alert, you will need to select or create alarms that will activate when metric thresholds are surpassed. 

In order to create alarms that are not yet associated with alerts, go to Cloud Alarms v44 v44.

Display VM alarms and alerts

To view a list of alerts and their associated alarms, open the Control view.

The muted alerts have an alert "speaker" symbol without sound waves. The alerts that are not muted have an alert symbol with sound waves.

Create alerts for VMs

Before you create an alert for a group of alarms, do the following steps:

1. Edit the VM and enable monitoring (see VM monitoring and metrics)
2. Optionally create VM alarms (see Cloud Alarms v44 v44)

To create an alert for metrics

1. Go to Control view → Alerts
2. Click the + add button
3. Enter the alert details

4. Assign existing alarms to the alert, or create new alarms and then assign them to the alert.

5. Click Save

If all alarms are activated, the alert will be activated. You can use the alert to trigger actions. See Manage action plans and triggers.

Manage alarms

To modify or delete an alarm associated with an alert:

1. Go to Control view → Alerts
2. In the Alerts list, open the alert to list the alarms. Select the alarm
   
   • To delete an alarm, click the delete button, and confirm
     The platform will delete it from all the alerts that it is associated with
   • To modify the alarm, make your changes, and click Save

To edit or delete alarms that are not attached to alerts, go to Virtual datacenters --> Alarms; see Cloud Alarms v44 v44

Manage scaling groups

Horizontal scaling of VMs enables users to configure an automatic response to changing demands for resources. To scale out, the platform clones the base VM and deploys the clones. To scale in, Abiquo will delete clone machines but it will just undeploy the base machine. Scaling operations are subject to all standard Abiquo constraints, such as privileges and allocation limits.

See Define scaling groups v44

After you define a scaling group, you can add scaling actions to an action plan and trigger the action plan based on a schedule or a monitoring alert.

Manage action plans and triggers

To enable more control over cloud operations, users can create VM action plans to run tasks for VMs and container workloads. 

VM action plans are for both private and public cloud and are an important autoscaling functionality on the platform. A VM can have mutliple action plans

In the user interface, in the Control view, on the Action plans tab, users can manage Action plans and Triggers that run the action plans.

Create an action plan

Before you create an action plan, first create at least one VM. To create an action plan:

1. Go to Control view → Action plans, and click the + button 
2. Enter the action plan details
3. Add actions: clicki the + Add button, select a general action or select a VM and a specific action type from the pulldown list, and enter the parameters as required. 
   Consider the following constraints on actions
   
   1. Maintenance block: You can create one complete maintenance block (start maintenance, action(s), and stop maintenance) and the maintenance block cannot contain any scaling actions
   2. Scale in and/or scale out actions: You can only scale in and/or scale out at the end of the action plan but you can create the scaling action(s) in any order (e.g. scale in first, only scale in)
   3. Email actions: You can perform an email action at any time, including after scaling actions
   4. Platform contstraints: For example, to create an instance, the VM must be deployed and powered off 
   5. Hypervisor constraints: For example, when using hot reconfigure on ESXi, you cannot decrement CPU or RAM 

Put the actions in run order using the arrow buttons. Delete actions as required using the trash can button to the left of the action name.

To run the action plan automatically, go to the Triggers tab and create an alert or schedule trigger. 

Run an action plan now

When you have added some actions and saved the action plan, you can run the action plan immediately to test it. Edit the action plan and click the Execute action plan button, which is beside the + add button to create a new action. 

Abiquo recommends that you run an action plan manually to test it before you create a trigger to run it automatically.

Create a trigger

The platform supports two types of triggers to run action plans: Alerts and Schedules. 

To run your action plan based on monitoring metrics, you can select an existing virtual appliance alert to trigger an Action plan. Click the + Add button and select the Alert. For details about creating an alert, see Manage Monitoring Alerts

To run your action plan automatically at selected dates and times, create a schedule trigger.

Delete an action plan

If you delete an action plan, Abiquo will also delete the schedule associated with that action plan. 

Related pages

• Main VM configuration page: Configure Virtual Machines
  • VM monitoring and metrics
  • Cloud Alarms v44 v44
• Configure VM Monitoring and Metrics