Manage action plans

Introduction to action plans

To enable more control over cloud operations, users can create action plans that can automatically run tasks on VMs and scaling groups, and to run general tasks, such as sending an email or web hook.

Action plans are an important automation functionality of the platform. They can combine general tasks with tasks that run on VMs and scaling groups in different providers and have multiple triggers including alerts from custom metrics, built-in metrics, budget alerts, and schedules.

Users can select groups of VMs or scaling groups to run actions based on tags. And multiple action plans can apply to a VM or scaling group.

Display action plans

To display action plans:

Go to Control → Action plans

Create an action plan

Before you create an action plan, consider the elements that you wish to automate with the action plan. Create VMs or scaling groups, fetch metrics, and create alarms and alerts.

To create an action plan:

Go to Control → Action plans, and click the + add button
Enter the action plan details
Go to Actions to add actions:
1. Click the + add button
2. Select the action Type: general action, VM, scaling group, VMs by tags, scaling groups by tags
3. If you are selecting by tags, then enter the tag filter.
  See Search for resources by tag and filter search
4. Enter action details
  1. Decrease CPU/RAM: you cannot use this with hot-reconfigure and you must check that the OS is compatible
  2. Instance: Name for Instance (clone) template. The platform will append the date to the name supplied
  3. Webhook action - Expected HTTP status code: If this status code is returned, continue running the action plan. Default: 204 No Content
  4. Email action - To, CC: Enter email addresses as a comma separated list
    For more details, see Action plan actions table and Webhook actions table below.
Put the actions in run order using the arrow buttons

To run the action plan automatically, go to the Triggers tab and create an alert or schedule trigger.

When you create actions on VMs also consider the following constraints.

User constraints: e.g. allocation limits
Platform constraints: e.g. to create an instance, the VM must be deployed and powered off
Hypervisor constraints: e.g. with hot reconfigure on ESXi, you cannot reduce CPU or RAM

For the API you can request the JSON schema for each action plan entry type from the API.
See: https://wiki.abiquo.com/api/latest/ActionPlansResource.html#list-action-plan-entry-templates

Action plan actions table

Action	Notes and Parameters
Virtual machine
Increase CPU	vCPUs
Decrease CPU	vCPUs. Not supported by hot-reconfigure. Check OS compatibility
Increase RAM	RAM RAM unit of GB or MB
Decrease RAM	RAM. Not supported by hot-reconfigure. Check OS compatibility RAM unit of GB or MB
Increase hardware profile	Use the same family and type
Decrease hardware profile	Use the same family and type
Resize disk	Amount Disk unit of GB or MB Selected disk
Instance	Name for Instance (clone) template. The platform will append the date to the name supplied All disks or selected disks
Set hardware profile	Select from the available hardware profiles
General
Send email	Subject Body To (email addresses) Cc (copy to these addresses) Enter email addresses as a comma separated list
Send webhook	See webhook attributes table
Scaling group
Start maintenance
End maintenance
Scale in
Scale out

Webhook action attributes table

Attribute	Description	Required	Default value
Endpoint	Where to submit the request	true
HTTP Method	The type of request can be GET, POST, or PUT	false	GET
Expected HTTP status code	If this status code is returned, continue running the action plan	false	204 No Content
Request headers	Headers such as, secret, authentication, and content-type	false
Request content	Request body	false

Run an action plan now

To run an action plan immediately to test it, do these steps:

Go to Control → Action plans
Select the action plan
On the Actions pane, click the Run action plan button

Abiquo recommends that you run an action plan manually to test it before you create a trigger to run it automatically.

Create a trigger for an action plan

The platform supports two types of triggers to run action plans: Alerts and Schedules.

To run your action plan based on metrics, select an existing alert with these steps:

Go to Control → Action plans
Select an action plan
Below the Alerts panel, click the + add button
Select an alert. For details about creating an alert, see Manage alerts.

To run your action plan automatically at selected dates and times, cre

ate a schedule trigger with these steps:

Go to Control → Action plans
Select an action plan
Below the Schedules panel, click the + add button
Enter the details of the schedule using the calendar or time and repeat interval as described below

To run the action plan at intervals of a fixed number of seconds within a set timeframe:

Select an Interval schedule
Enter the following parameters
1. Interval seconds: the number of seconds from when the action plan execution starts to when it will start again
2. Repeat count: the number of times to run the action plan. A value of 0 means repeat forever
3. Start time: date and time
4. End time: date and time

After you create an interval schedule, the platform will display the execution count of how many times the action plan has run. If the repeat count is 0, the execution count is null.

To run the action plan using a Cron-type schedule:

Select an Advanced schedule
Use the calendar selector.

Delete an action plan

If you delete an action plan, Abiquo will also delete the schedule associated with that action plan.