Install a test environment

Required skills

Some essential system administration skills required for managing the cloud platform are as follows:

• CentOS/RedHat Linux expertise for maintaining the Abiquo servers, which are Linux servers

• Computer and network security expertise to configure and maintain the cloud platform

• Advanced hypervisor knowledge including VM templates

• Networking including design, switch configuration, VLAN and DHCP and/or SDN configuration

• Storage including hypervisor datastores and NFS/CIFS

If you are testing Abiquo, you may not need all of these skills right away, but they are required to run a production environment.

Server components

Abiquo has the following key server components:

1. Abiquo Server: Cloud orchestrator, API, UI

2. Database and services: MySQL, RabbitMQ, Redis, and other services

3. Remote Services: to manage the cloud, with one set per Abiquo DC

4. Monitoring: optional server to Manage VM and platform metrics data

These components can be installed in different installation profiles.

Installation profiles

There are three main ways to install Abiquo:

1. Monolithic server: small environment, also for labs and testing

2. Distributed scalable: medium environment with separate components, suitable for production

3. Distributed HA cluster: large, high performance environments

This document describes how to install a Distributed scalable environment.

• To install a Monolithic environment, see Install a monolithic environment.

• To install a Distributed HA cluster, see Distributed HA cluster environment.

Distributed scalable installation

A Distributed scalable environment means that you have separate servers with the:

1. Abiquo Server

2. Remote Services

3. V2V/BPM Remote Services

4. Separate datanode, with services and the database.

5. And you will usually have a Monitoring server.

You will install these servers from the OVA files but first you need to prepare your environment.

Overview

Before you install the servers, you will need to prepare an NFS folder and your networks. Then you will install the Abiquo Server, Abiquo Remote Services, Abiquo V2V Services, Abiquo Datanode, and the Monitoring Server from the OVA files.

To get an idea of how all of this will look when you're done, here is a diagram.

And for more details about the Abiquo install profiles, see Abiquo components .

NFS folder

The platform will store the catalogue of VM templates in an NFS folder. So prepare a folder with enough space to hold all your templates and a fast network connection. The platform will automatically mount the NFS folder on remote services and hypervisors.

When you deploy a VM, the platform copies the template from the NFS to the hypervisor datastore.
The platform can also convert templates from one format to another (V2V). Note the network address and folder name to enter during the Abiquo install process.

For more details, see VM repository folder .

Networks

You will need to put the Abiquo Servers and components on the same network, which we call the Management network.

The VM networks are a group, which we call the Service network. For these networks you will need the following:

1. A range of network tags for your VMs to use in private networks.
   Configure this in your network infrastructure and then enter the tags for each group of hypervisors when you create your racks in Abiquo. For each private network, Abiquo will assign a tag from the range.

2. Network tags of other networks in your infrastructure that users can work with:

   1. Public networks: shared by all enterprises, users can purchase IPs

   2. External networks: any kind of IP address, for one tenant only.

And don’t forget to connect your hypervisors to the Service network… :-)

To assign IP addresses to VMs, Abiquo has a default DHCP configuration, which you can use in an isolated test environment. Abiquo also offers dnsmasq. 

For more details, see:

• Network for specifications

• Networking guide for Abiquo networking concepts

• Networking for descriptions of the networks

Install OVAs

The requirements of the appliances are at Distributed environment.

For each server, follow the steps at OVA deployment.

Then do the Post-OVA install steps.

When you've completed the install, your environment should be like the one shown at Distributed environment.