Configure virtual machines

This page describes how to configure VMs in detail. Before you read this page, you may like to work through Manage virtual machines to help you get started working with VMs. After you add your VMs to a virtual appliance, you can configure the VMs before deployment or reconfigure after deployment. Each of these configuration topics is also available as a separate page. 

Prepare to configure a VM

To prepare to configure a VM do these steps:

1. If your VM is deployed

   1. If your VM supports hot-reconfigure (in private cloud on VMware hypervisors, in public cloud, see provider features tables), you may configure when powered on

   2. If your VM does not support hot-reconfigure, select the VM and go to the stop button.

      1. If your guest supports graceful shutdown with guest tools, select the Shut down option

      2. Or connect to the VM and shut it down directly

      3. Or if your VM is prepared for a hard shutdown, select Power off

2. On the VM icon, select the options menu, and select Edit. Full configuration details are given below

3. After you make your changes click Save. The platform will reconfigure the VM. 

4. Deploy or power on the VM as appropriate.

General configuration

The DVD functionality has been replaced with the ISO functionality.

Field	Description
UUID	The Unique Identifier of the VM
Name	The Name of the VM. Defaults to the VM template name. If the provider does not support duplicate names, for example vCenter, Abiquo will add a number in parentheses after the name. For example, if you or another user already created two VMs from a template named TEMPLATE, then your next two VMs will be named TEMPLATE (2) and TEMPLATE (3). If the other user later deletes their second VM, your next VM may be TEMPLATE (1). The platform powers on VMs in ascending alphanumeric name order, so for example, 1_WebServer will power on before 2_Database. However, there is no guarantee that the VMs will finish starting up in the same order. If you try to rename the VM to a name that already exists in a provider that does not support duplicate names, then Abiquo will return the hypervisor error.
Fully qualified domain name	Optionally enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the VM. You can edit this value before you deploy the VM. If you don't enter a FQDN, the platform will automatically generate one. The hostname will be the VM name (format ABQ-uuid) or another Abiquo identifier (format ABQ-id). The domain will be the domain value of the private or external networks that the VM belongs to, or localdomain. After you deploy the VM, if you change the value in the operating system, then Abiquo will synchronize and obtain the new value.
Owner	The enterprise and user that owns the VM
Guest initial password	Generate an initial root or Administrator password for the VM and email it to the owner. You can change this value before you deploy the VM. See Guest setup
CPU	The number of CPUs. You may only change this value when the VM is undeployed or stopped or when using hot add/reconfigure. Requires the privilege to Edit VM details. The virtual datacenter and enterprise allocation limits will be checked when you enter this number. The number of CPUs available in the hypervisors will be checked when the VM is deployed or restarted. Read-only value when hardware profiles are used.
Cores per socket	The number of cores per socket. The number of CPUs must be divisible by the number of cores per socket. Not shown when hardware profiles are used.
RAM	The amount of RAM. Select MB or GB. You may only change this value when the VM is undeployed or stopped, or with hot add/reconfigure. Requires privilege Edit VM details privilege. The virtual datacenter and enterprise allocation limits will be checked when you enter this number. The number of CPUs available in the hypervisors will be checked when the VM is deployed or restarted. Read-only value when hardware profiles are used.
Enable remote access	Hypervisors with Remote Access Support only. Enable remote access on this VM. If the VM was created without remote access enabled on the hypervisor, it will be enabled. If you disable remote access, the configuration will remain but you cannot access it via the console icon.
Remote access	Remote Access to the VM by VNC may be Not Available, usually because the VM is not deployed. If it is available and you have the View datacenter details privilege, the Remote Access IP and Port may display.
Remote access password	To open the VNC remote access window to your VM from the console button on the control panel, you must enter this password. By default Abiquo will generate a random password for your VM. To change the password, enter a maximum of 8 characters that are alphanumeric characters only, i.e. [a..z][A..Z][0..9].  If you delete the password, the screen requesting the password will not appear. On ESXi hypervisors, if you set a password and later delete it, the password will be blank, not null. The screen requesting the password will appear, and you should press <Enter> to continue. If the VM is deployed when you change the password, the change will be applied when you save the VM. Limitation: On ESXi hypervisors you cannot change the password with hot-reconfigure; you must reboot to update the password for the VM
Show password	Optionally mark the checkbox to show the remote access password
SSH user / password	The default user and password from the VM template
VM keymap	ESX/ESXi only - If Remote Access is Available, you can select the keyboard type for remote access through the eye button for ESXi hypervisors
Description	A description of the VM. The default value is copied from the VM template
Icon	Enter the URL for the template's icon. This must be an accessible URL with a public or routable IP address, not localhost or 127.0.0.1. It may contain the IP address of the API server. It should use the same protocol as the server to avoid mixed content errors. We recommend square images with a size of 128x128 pixels and a transparent background. The compatible image formats are PNG, JPG, and GIF. This icon will have priority over the VM template's icon and the platform default icon.
Hardware profile	If your provider uses hardware profiles, select a hardware profile for the VM. You cannot increase/decrease a dynamic hardware profile
Created	Date and time that the VM was created

Configure network

If you deploy a VM without configuring a network interface, the platform will automatically assign an address in the default network.

Your administrator may create or obtain multiple IP addresses for your virtual datacenters under Virtual datacenters → Networks.

Create NICs and IP addresses

To create NICs and attach them to a VM:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances

2. If your VM is deployed and you are not using hot-reconfigure of NICs, shut down the VM

3. Edit the VM and go to Networks

4. Select a network type and a network. Network types include:

   1. Private networks with private IP addresses that only allow your VMs to communicate with others inside the same virtual datacenter

   2. External networks that belong to an enterprise and allow VMs to communicate with machines outside their virtual datacenter

   3. Public networks with Internet addressable public IP addresses that may be required to access your VM in public cloud

   4. Subnets of global networks that are required to deploy in Google Cloud Platform and that enable you to access cloud services without general internet access  

5. Depending on the network type, you may be able to:

   • Request an automatically created NIC and IP by dragging and dropping "Automatically generated IP" to your VM. This IP address will be created and assigned at deploy time.

     

   • Create a new IP address and NIC by clicking the + add button, which requires the Manage virtual network elements privilege 

   • Purchase a public IP address by clicking the Purchase public IPs button

   • Create a new NIC by dragging an IP address into the IPs pane

     

Optionally set default gateway

In the Default gateway box, optionally select an address to be the default gateway of the VM.

Edit VM network configuration

To reorder network interfaces in the VM in supported clouds:

1. Beside a network interface, click the pencil edit button

2. Enter the desired number in the sequence where you would like to move the interface

3. Click OK

To remove a NIC from a VM:

1. Check that its network does not have the default gateway address for the VM

2. Click the X beside the NIC

To change the default gateway:

1. Select a new gateway from the list. 

To remove the current default gateway:

1. Select the gateway address

2. Click the X delete button beside the gateway address

For public cloud network configurations, please check for the following:

• Automatic network configuration or network requirements, for example, a required public IP

• Charges for public IPs that are not used by running VMs. When you remove an IP from a VM or undeploy the VM, if you no longer need the same IP address, remove it from your VDC and the platform.

• Different public IP address when you remove a public IP and add another public IP to your virtual datacenter and VM

• Limits for public IPs that are independent of any public IP limit in the platform

• The platform does not support OCI Secondary private IP addresses, so it will not display them in the VM configuration. It will display them as unavailable on the Network configuration screens. See Display secondary IP addresses in OCI

A public IP that is not part of any network in the platform is called a floating IP.

To remove a public IP from your VM

1. Power off or undeploy the VM

2. Click the trash bin delete button near the IP address.

Configure storage

In private cloud datacenters, VMs can have the following storage types, when supported in your environment:

• Volumes of managed storage

• Hard disks on the hypervisor datastore

• ISO hard disks on datastore DVD drives

Display VM storage

To display VM storage, including the details of the primary disk and attached storage,

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → select VM

2. Go to the VM details panel → Storage

To display and configure VM storage:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → select the VM

2. To configure storage, if you are not using hot-reconfigure of disks, power off the VM

3. Edit the VM

4. Go to Storage

Attach volumes of managed storage

Storage volumes are persistent, which means they will still be available after you undeploy the VM. 

To attach storage volumes to a VM

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → select VM

2. If you are not using hot reconfigure, power off the VM

3. Edit the VM and go to Storage

4. The platform displays the list of Volumes available to you in the virtual datacenter.  To attach a volume to your VM, drag it from the Volumes pane to the main Storage pane. 

5. To save all your changes to the VM, click Save. If the VM is deployed, it will be automatically reconfigured.

Create hard disks on hypervisor datastores

In private cloud datacenters, you can create secondary hard disks that are not persistent. This means that when you undeploy the VM or remove the hard disk the platform will delete your hard disks and destroy all data on them.

• Administrators can control the display of the Hard Disk Tab in Configuration View#General tab

• The administrator can force the use of the same controller type and controller as for the primary template disk using the appropriate Abiquo Configuration property.

To save data before you undeploy, create a backup, or create an Abiquo instance template. See Manage VMs#SaveVMdiskstocreateaninstancetemplate 

To add a VM hard disk:

1. Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters 

2. Edit a VM and go to Storage

3. Click the + add button

4. Select Assign virtual disk and complete the dialog. Some of the options may only be available to users with the required privileges

   

   1. The Datastore tier is the storage service level

   2. Optionally, on supported hypervisors (ESXi) and SCSI controller types

      1. For the Controller, if you already have this controller on the VM, to force the creation of a new controller of the same type, assign a new bus value. Access ESXi to confirm bus values.

      2. For the Bus, select an existing bus number or to create a new controller, specify a new bus number. The user requests a bus number but the platform will use the bus number assigned by ESXi. When there is more than one controller, to identify the controller and bus number, the platform displays the bus number as a suffix to the controller. Access ESXi to confirm bus numbers that are not displayed

5. Click Save to create the disk, then finish editing the VM

6. To save the VM, click Save 

Add an ISO disk to install software

To add an ISO disk from the Catalogue:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit a VM → Storage

2. Click the + add button

3. Choose Select an ISO disk

4. From the Catalgoue browser, select an ISO disk 

5. Click Save

Abiquo will create a DVD hard disk on the hypervisor datastore to contain the ISO disk. You cannot resize an ISO hard disk.

Detach volumes and delete hard disks

When you detach a volume, it will be available in the virtual datacenter again. For ESXi, you can only detach an iSCSI external storage volume if the VM does not have VMware snapshots. If you cannot detach a volume as expected, please contact your System Administrator.

When you detach a hard disk, the platform will destroy it and all data on it.

To delete a hard disk or to detach a volume of virtual storage:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage

2. Select the hard disk or volume

3. Click the detach/delete button at the top right of the Storage tab

4. Confirm the delete or detach operation

5. Click Cancel to discard changes or Save to reconfigure the VM in the hypervisor

A volume that has been detached will now be available again in the virtual datacenter.

Change VM storage boot order

Abiquo recommends that you change the boot order by itself, without making any other disk configuration changes at the same time. Disk hot-reconfigure on ESXi only supports changes to the boot order as part of disk add or disk remove operations. Other changes made in the platform will not be implemented until the VM is powered off and reconfigured. Note that the platform will ignore Cloud-init ISO disks in the boot order.

To change the boot order:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage

2. Click the pencil edit button beside the Boot order number

3. Enter the new number in the Boot order where you want the disk to go and click ok.

4. Repeat for other disks, as required 

5. The platform will ensure that each disk has a unique number in the boot order and the boot order is contiguous (without gaps between disk numbers).

6. Click Save to reconfigure the VM with the new order

   

 The platform will change the boot order.

Modify VM volumes

After you add a volume of external storage to a VM, save the VM before you modify the volume.

To modify a VM volume:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage

2. Select the attached volume and click the pencil edit button

Modify the controller type and controller as required

Edit a VM volume in private cloud

Edit a VM volume in Azure

In private cloud, when a volume is attached to a VM, you can edit the Controller type and Controller. 

In public cloud, when a volume is attached to a deployed VM, you can edit the size of a volume in Azure, AWS, and GCP, and the tier in Azure and AWS. To make changes to volumes in Azure, the VM must be in the "deallocated" state. 

To make other changes to a volume (e.g. resize), go to the Virtual datacenters view on the Volumes tab. See Manage persistent storage and VMs#Managepersistentvolumes

Modify VM hard disks

You can edit hard disks, for example, to change the name and resize them, including in an existing deployed VM on demand.

To edit a hard disk

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit virtual machine → Storage

2. Select the hard disk and click the pencil edit button

   Edit a virtual disk in private cloud

   

   Edit the system disk in AWS

   

3. For ESXi, you can modify disks as permitted by ESXi functionality. See VMware knowledge base article. 

   • You can modify iSCSI disks on SCSI controllers or SATA disks on SATA controllers:

     • with thin provisioning only; and

     • the VM cannot have VMware snapshots.

   In private cloud, for SCSI and SATA disks, you cannot modify disk size and position at the same time.

   If you cannot modify a hard drive as expected, please contact your System Administrator.

4. Click Save on the Edit virtual disk size popup

5. Continue editing the VM or click Save to reconfigure the VM

VM hard disk table

Configure VM backups

Create a manual backup now

To request a manual backup of a VM now:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Backup

2. At the bottom of the Backup tab, click the Backup now button

The platform will request an immediate backup of the VM or a VM snapshot

Configure a VM backup

Configure bootstrap scripts

Assign firewalls

Abiquo supports firewall policies that are similar to security groups in private cloud with network managers, and in public cloud providers that support security groups, such as AWS and Azure.

Abiquo supports firewall policies that are similar to security groups in private cloud with network managers, and in public cloud providers that support security groups, such as AWS and Azure.

If your provider offers firewall policies, first create them in your virtual datacenters, then assign firewall policies to your VMs.

Privileges: Assign firewall

To assign a firewall from the virtual datacenter to a VM:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Firewalls

2. Mark the required firewall policy with a tick in the Firewall policies checklist

3. Click Save or continue editing the VM as required

Troubleshooting:

• If you cannot assign more firewall policies, check your cloud provider's limit. For example, for AWS, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_SecurityGroups.html#VPCSecurityGroups

• If your provider's default firewall policy does not display, you may need to synchronize your virtual datacenter or firewall policies before you continue

• If an expected firewall policy does not display, for example, a firewall policy that you recently created, you may need to wait for the firewall policy to propagate through the provider's API because of eventual consistency

• You can remove the default firewall when editing a VM. However, if the provider requires a firewall and you do not supply another one, the platform will assign the default firewall again.

Assign load balancers

To assign a VM to a load balancer:

Privileges: Assign load balancers

1. Edit the VM and go to Load balancers

2. Select the load balancer from the list

Related pages

• Create load balancer policies at the virtual datacenter level: Manage load balancers

Configure metrics

The platform may automatically enable metrics for all VMs. If you have the privilege to Manage virtual machine monitoring and it is configured in your virtual datacenter, you can enable the option to fetch built-in metrics from the hypervisor or public cloud region, as well as any custom metrics defined for your VM.

Enable VM monitoring and metrics

To enable VM monitoring and metrics:

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters and edit a VM

2. Go to Monitoring

   

3. Select the Fetch metrics data checkbox. This will retrieve all metrics while the VM is deployed

4. Select from the available options, for example, for AWS offers Detailed or Basic monitoring.

5. Select the individual metrics you would like to display for your VM. The functionality and list of available metrics depend on the underlying virtualization technology and the platform configuration. 

The platform will always retrieve all metrics, so you can change the metrics to display at any time. And you can use any metric for alarms and alerts, even if you do not display it. You may need to wait a short time for the first metrics to load.

Display metrics for a VM

To display and filter metrics for a VM:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliance

2. On the VM icon → click the graph metrics symbol

   

3. The metrics panel will open and you can dynamically filter and select which metrics to display. 

   

To update the display of a metric, click the round-arrow refresh button.

To configure the display of the metric:

1. Select the funnel filter button

2. Set the following as required

   1. Granularity, which is how often the metric is sampled

   2. Statistic, which determines how the raw values will be processed over time

   3. "Last" period, which is how long the display will look behind at the processed data

   4. Metric dimensions: for metrics with more than one possible element being monitored, for example, multiple hard disks, you can display metric dimensions, which are metrics for separate elements.

      1. To view metric dimensions, click Get dimensions. Select a dimension.

      2. If no dimension is selected, the default value is the average of all dimensions

3. Click Accept to save the values.

To view the exact metric values in a call-out box, mouse over the metric graph line.

To create a highlight point, click on the metric graph line.

To simultaneously view the data for more than one VM, use the virtual appliance Monitoring view.

Configure variables

vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.abiquo.<variable-name>"

Display VM events

To display VM events:

1. Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances

2. Edit a VM

3. Go to Events

To display the detail of an event, click on the event.

To sort events by a column, click on the column header. 

Edit VM cost codes

To assign cost codes for extra charges to a VM:

Privileges: Manage virtual machine extra charges

1. Edit the VM

2. Go to Extra charges
    You cannot change cost codes for extra charges that are from the hardware profile or template 

3. Click the + add button

4. Select a cost code for an Extra charge

   1. For a cost code for an extra charge with Usage user licenses, enter the number of Users for the VM

5. After you finish editing the VM, click Save

Related pages

• Definition of Abiquo concepts in myCloud view

• Introduction to working with VMs in Manage virtual machines