Azure ARM features table

Abiquo offers these features in the public cloud integration with Microsoft Azure RM (ARM) Compute.

The platform supports basic SKUs for load balancer and public IP resources. It does not support standard SKU resources.

Azure RM may require separate credentials for groups of regions. For example, for regions in China the user will need separate credentials and they should select the appropriate provider, such as "Azure (CHINA)".

Azure uses the VM Name and the Resource Group to identify a VM.

You cannot change the VM Name of a VM that is running in Azure
The VM Name must be unique in the Resource Group (the public cloud region in the platform)

In v5.0.1+, the platform uses the VM label (or friendly name) as the Azure VM Name

When you create a VM, the default VM label is the VM template name.
Before you deploy, you can edit the VM label
The platform will check that it meets the Azure naming criteria

Do not delete the abiquo-name tag with the ABQ_uuid value

The platform uses it to identify the VM in Azure
To display the tags in the Azure portal, see the instructions in the Azure documentation

Azure ARM Feature	Support	Comments
Configure and remove VMs		When you create a VM, you’ll select the hardware profile. The Name of the VM in Azure is the platform's VM label (friendly name). It must meet the Azure naming criteria and you cannot change it after deployment.
Onboard templates		To search for templates in Azure ARM, the format for a template ID is /Subscriptions/{subscription}/Providers/Microsoft.Compute/Locations/{region}/Publishers/Canonical/ArtifactTypes/VMImage/Offers/{offer}/Skus/{sku}/Versions/{version}
Reconfigure VMs		You can edit deployed VMs to: attach and detach firewalls and load balancers, change hardware profiles, and reconfigure NICs The platform may require you to power off a VM to make changes to multiple vNIC configurations that were created in the Azure portal You cannot change the order of NICs on an Azure VM after you deploy the VM
Power on VM
Power off VM		Abiquo supports power off and deallocate of VMs. A deallocated VM is in the OFF state, and it has the "deallocated" attribute is set to "true".
Reset VM
Pause and resume VM
Storage		Volumes are Azure Managed Disks. Users can onboard and create volumes, and attach them to VMs After users detach volumes from VMs or delete VMs, the synchronization process will make the volumes available in the public cloud region Users can move volumes between virtual datacenters and release them to the region Azure does not support premium storage for some hardware profiles. The platform does not enable you to configure VMs with premium storage
Take a VM snapshot		The Abiquo instance functionality has been disabled in Abiquo 4.7.0 pending further development.
Remote access		Depending on template type, for example: RedHat: template user/password Ubuntu: Using your SSH key registered in Abiquo, or template user/password
Create and delete networks		Each Abiquo VDC will map to an Azure ARM virtual network An Abiquo private network will map to a subnet in the VDC network Users can allocate and assign public IPs (as in AWS) The platform will onboard and synchronize dynamic public IPs The platform supports basic SKU public IPs. It does not support standard SKU public IPs
Create and delete VPNs		Site-to-site VPNs, for example, from private cloud (NSX) to Azure, and from Azure to Azure
Create and delete VDCs		Abiquo will not be locked to a single resource group and will be able to manage and onboard existing resources regardless of the resource group they belong to Each Abiquo VDC will map to an Azure ARM virtual network
Create and manage firewall policies		The platform supports one firewall per VM When onboarding VMs, if the VM and firewall are not in the same VDC, the platform will not assign the firewall to the VM Azure allows users to create deny rules in their VM firewalls. Abiquo synchronizes firewall policies with deny rules but it does not display the deny rules, and it will not allow you to edit the firewall rules. Abiquo does not synchronize Azure firewalls that use application security groups.
Use Chef		Enterprise Chef or your own server
Use Chef attributes
VM bootstrap scripts
VM variables		Stored as node metadata.
Load balancing		See Azure load balancers table
Import and synchronize VMs		To onboard VMs, the enterprise must have credentials registered.
VM monitoring and metrics		Abiquo supports monitoring with Azure built-in metrics You can also use the Abiquo monitoring server and Abiquo collectd plugin, which can be installed using the Abiquo Chef cookbook. See Use collectd plugin for custom metrics
Dashboard billing widgets		The Hybrid tab of the Home dashboard view can display public cloud billing information, including the latest bills and estimated bill. See Hybrid and for configuration instructions see Display cloud provider billing data
High availability		Manage Azure Availability Sets All of the VMs in an availability set must be in the same Azure Virtual Network, which means they must be in the same Abiquo virtual datacenter. To attach Azure VMs to a load balancer, you must add them to the same Availability set.