Microsoft Azure integration

Abiquo and Azure

Abiquo has an integration with Microsoft Azure for compute and billing. For a summary of the Azure features supported, please see Azure features table.

Abiquo XaaS also enables you to offer Microsoft Products as part of your cloud platform, including MySQL, and Office 365. See Use the Microsoft products service and Azure Database for MySQL.

Display billing data

Abiquo displays the billing data from the Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft products on the billing widgets. The billing widgets are part of the default  Hybrid dashboard. See Display Azure billing data, which is for Azure CSP resellers and their customers, and Display Azure billing data for standard accounts.

Abiquo and ARM

Abiquo can manage Azure virtual resources from resource groups down to VMs.

Abiquo creates virtual datacenters that correspond to virtual networks in Azure. You can also onboard virtual networks and their associated resources, to create virtual datacenters in Abiquo.

Public cloud regions

To use Azure in Abiquo, the first step is to create a public cloud region.

Creating an Abiquo public cloud region for Azure is a similar process to creating a datacenter. But you can create multiple regions at the same time. And you can share the remote services with datacenters and other public cloud regions.

For more details, see Create a public cloud region

Mapping Azure accounts to Abiquo

Remember that you can add credentials for ONE Azure subscription to ONE Abiquo enterprise only.

If you have a CSP account, you can give customers access to compute and billing features, or billing features only.

If one of your customers has an account with multiple subscriptions, you can create a key node enterprise with standard enterprises. You can then add the Azure subscriptions to the standard enterprises.

Onboard CSP accounts

If you are using Azure Cloud Service Provider credentials, create a tenant hierarchy to manage your customer accounts.

• For full instructions for this process, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/443056256/Create+an+Azure+reseller

Onboard a standard Azure account

If you would like to try the Azure compute and billing features, you can use a standard account, which is an account that was purchased directly from Microsoft, and not from a Cloud Service Provider.

You can also onboard standard accounts into your reseller hierarchy.

To use a standard account in Abiquo, first Obtain Azure ARM credentials for compute and billing, and add the credentials to an Abiquo enterprise.

And for billing features, add the following properties to your Abiquo enterprise, with the appropriate values for your Azure subscription.

"azurecompute-arm_discount" : "0"
"azurecompute-arm_currency_code" : "USD"
"billing.azure.country_code": "US"

Hardware profiles

Abiquo will automatically retrieve the hardware profiles for your public cloud region, which are Azure virtual machine sizes. The platform also registers if a hardware profile is Active and if it belongs to the Current generation.

See Hardware profiles

Resource groups

When users onboard or synchronize virtual datacenters, the platform will onboard or update the Azure Resource Groups used in the platform.

From the Resource groups tab, you can manage resource groups and all of the resources in each resource group.

Create a resource group

If you do not onboard resource groups from Azure, you must create a resource group before you create a virtual datacenter.

To create a resource group, go to myCloud → global. The resource group is at the global level, but Abiquo will store the metadata in the selected Region.

For more details see Manage resource groups.

Availability sets

Abiquo manages Azure Availability Sets to enable users to separate workloads for high availability. 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.

For more details, see Manage availability sets.

To use basic SKU load balancers in Azure, you must create an availability set and add your VMs to it.

VM template catalogue

After you create a public cloud region and add credentials, you can go the Catalogue and onboard a selection of Azure VM templates for your users.

• For more details, see Import public cloud templates.

When you are importing templates, you can filter by providers. And if your templates have conditions of use, you can accept them on import, or users can accept them when they create a VM.

To configure the predefined publishers, on the Remote Services server, in the abiquo.properties file, set the jclouds.azurecompute.arm.publishers property.

To configure remote access, edit a template and add a User name (or you can connect to your VMs as the abiquo user), and for Windows add a Password.

To configure the default user and password for your platform, on the Remote Services server, edit the abiquo.properties file and set the following properties with your own values.

abiquo.virtualfactory.azurecompute-arm.defaultloginname=abiquo
abiquo.virtualfactory.azurecompute-arm.defaultloginpassword=Password12345!

Virtual datacenters

In Azure, Abiquo virtual datacenters are Virtual Networks. Abiquo uses the following configuration to create a Virtual Network with internet connectivity.

The virtual network in Azure will have the same name as the VDC in Abiquo. In Azure, the VDC’s private network is a subnet of the virtual network.

When you create a VDC, you can specify the address space of the virtual network. And you can create, onboard, and delete address ranges in Azure. See Manage address ranges.

When you create a VDC, you must select a resource group. Abiquo will automatically assign the resource group to other entities that you create within the VDC, such as firewalls and private networks.

Public IP addresses

In Azure, you can allocate and assign public IPs as in other public cloud providers. The platform will onboard and synchronize dynamic public IPs within virtual datacenters. Abiquo supports standard SKU public IPs and basic SKU public IPs. To be able to connect to a VM, add a public IP address.

Azure firewalls

Abiquo supports firewall policies, which are Azure Network Security Groups. In Abiquo, you can apply one firewall per VM, and this firewall will apply to all vNICs. When you create an Azure firewall, select your virtual datacenter and resource group.

To be able to connect to your VMs, add an inbound firewall rule to the firewall policy to allow the SSH protocol for Linux or the RDP protocol for Windows. Allow connections from the desired IP address (in this case we used 0.0.0.0/0 for convenience, but we don’t recommend this for security reasons).

Virtual machines

To create a VM, select a template and an Availability zone.

Then select a hardware profile as in other public cloud providers.

To be able to connect to your VM, add a private IP and a public IP address in the first vNIC sequence position.

To be able to connect to the VM, also select a firewall to allow connections.

 After you deploy your VM, you should be able to connect using the VM template user and password. For some Linux templates, you may be able to connect with the user SSH key.

Deallocate VMs

To power off a VM in Azure, select the Power off option. To deallocate a VM in Azure, select the Deallocate option. 

A deallocated VM has a state of "OFF" and the "deallocated" attribute set to true. The UI displays the text "(Deallocated)" on the VM label.

You do not have to power off or deallocate a VM to add or remove secondary IP addresses. But to add or remove a vNIC, you should power off the VM and put it in the Deallocated state.

Load balancers

Standard SKU load balancers and Basic SKU load balancers.

For more details see Azure load balancers table and Manage load balancers.

Volumes

You can create volumes of external storage in Azure at the virtual datacenter or location level. Abiquo volumes are Managed Disks in Azure.

Then when you create or edit a VM, you can go to the Storage tab to drag a volume into the VM configuration.

After you detach a volume from a VM or delete a VM, the synchronization process will make the volume available in the public cloud region.

When you undeploy a VM, the platform will delete the boot volume because it defines the boot volume as a hard disk. But the platform will keep the other disks as volumes in the virtual datacenter. Users can add these volumes to other VMs and move the volumes to other virtual datacenters in the same public cloud region.

When you onboard resources, if a VM has persistent volumes attached, the platform will add them to the VDC and VM. Otherwise, it will add them to the cloud location.

VPNs

Abiquo supports Azure VPNs. For more details, see Manage VPNs and Connect your virtual datacenter to Azure via VPN.