Abiquo quick walkthrough of Azure public cloud

Configure your user account

1. Log in with the username and password supplied by Customer Service, or admin and xabiquo.

2. Click the user icon button in the bottom left corner of the screen and select Edit user
   (OR go to Users view → Users and select and edit your user)

3. Add an Email address and Phone number to receive notifications from the platform

4. Go to Advanced and add an SSH public key

   1. Azure currently supports SSH protocol 2 (SSH-2) RSA public-private key pairs with a minimum length of 2048 bits. Other key formats such as ED25519 and ECDSA are not supported.

   2. For more details see How to work with SSH keys

Create a public cloud region

The cloud administrator creates public cloud regions to configure public cloud providers for users.

1. Open Infrastructure view by clicking the servers icon at the top of the main menu

2. Go to Public

3. Click the + add button at the bottom of the Public cloud regions list
   
   

   Open

   

   Steps to create a public cloud region

4. Enter the Name of your public cloud region

5. Select the Provider

6. Select the Region to add. You can add more than one region

   Open

   

   Select the public cloud region to add

7. Click Next

8. Select the Remote services. Abiquo uses Remote services to connect to the providers and manage the cloud.

   1. In the first IP address box, click the down arrow and select the Remote service URL from the pull-down list, or enter the URL of your Monolithic server

   2. Click the link to Duplicate IP addresses at the top of the popup

9. Click Check all to check the connection to the remote services

10. Click Save

Add tenant credentials for the public cloud provider

Each cloud tenant will require their own set of public cloud credentials, and access to the public cloud region. Note that you can also register your tenants as a customer of a cloud reseller that is using the platform.

1. Go to Users and edit the tenant enterprise

2. To allow users of the tenant enterprise to deploy in the public cloud region, go to Datacenters, and check that the public cloud region is in the Allowed datacenters list. If not, drag it into the list.

3. Go to Credentials → Public

4. Select the Provider

5. Enter the Access key and the Secret access key. For more details, see Obtain Azure credentials
   
   

6. Click Add account

7. Click Save

The tenant's account will be added for the provider and displayed in the public cloud view of the Infrastructure tab.

Add VM templates to the catalogue in Azure

The Catalogue stores VM templates so that users can easily create VMs from them. In public cloud, the platform stores VM template details and then deploys from the public cloud templates. To create VMs, users select VM templates in their virtual datacenters.

1. Open the Catalogue view by clicking the Catalogue icon

2. Select Public

3. Select the public cloud region

4. Click the import template button

5. Enter the ID of a template to import, or a Name text, for example Linux, because we recommend that you use a Linux template.

6. Optionally, filter by template providers, for example, use the Canonical provider and search for an ubuntu template.

7. Click Search

8. Select a Template to import and click the import symbol beside the template

9. If your template has terms of use, accept them now or when you first deploy a VM from the template. 

   1. This requires the privilege to Manage virtual machine template terms of use and it enables programmatic deployment of the template for your Azure subscription.

      1. If you then disable programmatic deployment in the portal but you would like to deploy the template, you will need to delete it from the platform and import it again.

10. Select and edit the template

    1. The template name is the default name for the VM, so it may be helpful to rename it. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/management/resource-name-rules

    2. To add default user details for remote access, go to Advanced

    3. Select the template Operating system. For the latest version, do not set the OS version

    4. Enter a Username. For Linux, enter abiquo. You do not need to enter a password.
       For Windows, enter Administrator and a password with at least 12 characters

11. Click Save

Create a resource group

To create a virtual datacenter in Azure, if you do not have a resource group, you must create a resource group. You can use resource groups to manage groups of related resources in the cloud provider. 

To create a resource group:

1. To go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters, click the cloud button

2. Go to the Global section

3. Select the Azure cloud provider

4. In Resource groups, click the + add button

5. Complete the dialog as described below
   
   

   1. The Name must be unique in the subscription, which means in the enterprise

   2. Select the Region that will store the metadata of the resource group

6. Click Save

Create a virtual datacenter and virtual appliance

Virtual datacenters contain the virtual resources of the cloud service. In them, users can create VMs to launch them to the infrastructure, and they can manage their networks, storage, and more.

A virtual appliance is a container for a group of VMs running in a virtual datacenter. It is like a folder that can contain a related set of VMs that are used to provide a service, such as a web stack. You can deploy these VMs together, view their performance statistics, manage VM high availability, and so on.

To create a virtual datacenter and virtual appliance:

1. To open the myCloud Virtual datacenters view, click the cloud icon

2. Click the + add button at the bottom of the Virtual Datacenters list

3. Select Create virtual datacenter

4. Enter a Name, and select the Public cloud region

5. Select the Resource group

6. Click Save

7. To use VMs with a basic SKU load balancer, in your virtual datacenter, go to Network and create an Availability set
   
   

8. Select the virtual datacenter and in the Virtual Appliances pane, click the + add button and enter the Name of the virtual appliance then click Save.

The virtual appliance you create will display in the Virtual Appliances list.

Create a VM in Azure

When you create a VM, you can select from the compatible templates.

To connect to your VM in Azure, you will need to add a private IP address, as well as a public IP address.

1. To go into your virtual appliance, click Open under its Name.

2. To create a VM, click Create virtual machine and select a VM template

   1. For the Name, enter a user-friendly name for the VM that meets provider criteria

   2. Select the Availability set

   3. Click Save

3. Select an appropriate Hardware profile for your VM

4. On the VM icon from the options menu, select Edit

5. Click Network and select Private networks

   1. Drag the Auto-generated IP label into the NICs pane

6. Select Public and click Purchase public IP

   1. Click the + add button

   2. Select the Resource group and IP type
      
      

   3. Click Accept

   4. Select an IP address and click Add

7. Drag the public IP into the NICs pane. Select the VNIC Sequence of 0 and click Accept
   
   

8. Click Save

9. To go out of the virtual appliance, click the Name of the virtual datacenter or the myCloud icon

Configure the VM firewall for public cloud

To connect to a VM in public cloud, create a firewall to allow access. Because this VM will only be active for a very short time, we will use basic default settings.

To create a firewall in Azure do these steps.

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters → Networks → Firewalls

2. Select the virtual datacenter

3. Click the + add button to create a firewall for connections and enter the Name

    

4. Select the firewall and click the pencil edit button to add the Firewall rules
   
   

5. For Inbound

   1. From Common protocols for a Linux VM, select SSH and/or for a Windows VM, select RDP

   2. Allow incoming connections from your IP address. Or for a temporary test system, allow all connections.

   3. Click Add
      
      

6. Go to Outbound, select All traffic, click Add, then click Save.
   The platform will create the firewall.

7. Go to Virtual appliances and on the virtual appliance and click on Open 

8. Edit your VM

9. Go to Networks → Firewall

10. Select your firewall and click Save.
    
    

Deploy the virtual appliance in public cloud

To deploy the virtual appliance

• From outside the virtual appliance, on the options menu, select Deploy.
  
  

• OR From inside the virtual appliance, click the Deploy virtual appliance button. You can also deploy a VM on its own with the Deploy VM button.

The platform will deploy all the VMs and power them on. You can select the VMs and manage them with the control buttons in the lower right corner of the screen.

Now you can relax and give your VM some time to start up.

Connect to your VM

You can connect using SSH for Linux or RDP for Windows.

1. Go to Virtual datacenters and open the Virtual appliance

2. Select the VM

3. To obtain the default username (and password for Windows), go to the General tab of the VM control panel and click the default credentials key button

4. To open the remote connection, click the console button

5. A console should open to allow you to connect to your VM. The platform will automatically complete the Username.

6. For Linux VMs, enter the SSH private key (also called the Decryption key).
   For Windows VMs on Azure, enter the Password.

   The console will open to let you work on your VM.
   
   

If you cannot connect due to an unsecured certificate error, open a new tab in the same browser, enter the host IP of the VM, and accept the certificate.