Glossary for cloud tenants

Catalogue

The Catalogue is the centralized VM template library. You can deploy your VMs on a self-service basis using the templates available to them in the catalogue.
You can upload VM templates from local disks or remote repositories. And you also download templates from the catalogue to local disk.
The Catalogue was previously called the Apps library, Appliance library or Application library.

Base format

The base format is the platform's default format for a hypervisor. See Template compatibility table#Hypervisor Compatibility Table

Captured virtual machine

A VM that was created outside of Abiquo and retrieved (imported) into Abiquo then captured.
Abiquo can manage captured VMs in the same way as VMs you created in Abiquo. See Import and capture virtual machines.

Cloud

Datacenters that offer pay-as-you-go, scalable, and flexible virtual infrastructure (compute, network and storage) as a service to cloud users

Datacenter

A group of physical machines on the same LAN (Local Area Network).
These machines are usually located in the same place, and share a network and resources (e.g. electrical power)

Datacenter networks

Networks that the Cloud administrator creates at datacenter level: external, public, and unmanaged networks.

Default network

A network that can be set for an enterprise (external, private) or virtual datacenter (public, external, private).

Deploy

The process of allocating, provisioning, and powering on a virtual machine.

Enterprise

On our multi-tenant platform, an enterprise is a cloud tenant.
So an enterprise could be a third-party company, development group, company department, etc. that can access the same virtual infrastructure.

Enterprise repository

Each enterprise has its own catalogue where cloud users can select VM templates for self-service deployment.
The templates in the enterprise repository can be public (globally shared with all users) or private (local to their enterprise's users only).

Hard limit

The maximum amount of RAM, CPU, and HD resources that you can use in an enterprise or virtual datacenter.

Hypervisor

A virtualization platform that enables you to create different VMs on the same physical machine, e.g. VMware ESXi

Instance

You can make an instance of your VMs, which is a snapshot copy of selected disks that are stored as an instance template in the catalogue.
In private cloud an instance is stored with the original master template from which the VM was deployed.
A VM deployed from an instance will use a copy of the original VM template definition.

Managed networks

When you deploy a VM in a managed network, Abiquo configures the IP addresses.
Managed networks included: private, external and public networks.

Managed - virtual machine

A VM that was created by the platform, or captured from its hypervisor or public cloud region that was added to the platform.
In contrast, a VM that has been retrieved but not captured is not managed by the platform.

Physical machine
or Cloud node

A host or physical machine has a hypervisor running on it in order to provide a virtualization infrastructure

Reconfigure

When you reconfigure a VM, you change it’s configuration after you deployed it.
If you cannot hot-reconfigure a VM, you must power off the VM to reconfigure it.
Elements that can be changed during a reconfigure include: network interfaces and volumes.

Soft limit

A soft limit will alert you that you are near an absolute limit of a resource, in a VDC, or in a cloud location. Soft limits < hard limits

Synchronized

When your VMs or resources are synchronized, the states of the resources are the same in Abiquo and in the hypervisor or public cloud region.

Tenant

In Abiquo, cloud tenants are known as enterprises.

Undeploy

The process of destroying the VM in the hypervisor and releasing resources on the platform.

Users

Your user belongs to a tenant enterprise, which may be an organization, department, and so on.
Each user has a role with its associated access privileges.

VApp spec

A VApp Spec (Virtual Appliance Spec) is a configuration blueprint saved from a virtual appliance that users can deploy.

Virtual appliance

A group of VMs running in a virtual datacenter.
The virtual appliance is like a folder that can contain a related set of VMs that are used to provide a service, such as a web stack.
At the virtual appliance level, you can deploy these virtual machines together, view their performance statistics, create anti-affinity layers for VM high availability, and so on.

Virtual datacenter (VDC)

A partitioned area of the cloud where you can work with virtual resources that belong to your tenant.
The tenant administrator may control your use of the VDC (limit resources, create volumes, obtain public IP addresses, etc).
You can access your virtual resources with self-service.
All of the VMs in a VDC use the same type of virtualization technology (hypervisor, public cloud provider).
They are all in the same public cloud region or physical datacenter and rack. See Manage virtual datacenters

Virtual datacenter networks

Networks at virtual datacenter level: private networks that are isolated within the virtual datacenter.

Virtual Machine (VM)

A guest or virtual machine is an instance of a virtual image with network and storage configurations.
On a hypervisor it can be understood as a virtual operating system instance or container.
One Physical Machine with a Hypervisor installed can host various VMs.

Virtual machine template (also Virtual image in API)

A VM template contains the disk files that the platform uses to create a VM and the VM definition.
In public cloud, the platform stores the VM definition and it uses the disk files in the provider.

Virtual machine template definition

The VM template definition is description of the VM and the deployment requirements.
This includes the resources such as CPU, RAM, and HD.
When you deploy a VM, Abiquo sends the VM template definition to create the VM.