Apps Library

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The Apps Library is a Service Catalogue where the Admin will make it easy for the cloud users to work with the infrastructure that they are providing. In the Service Catalogue, the Admin will provide the VM templates for creating VMs and blueprints for creating virtual appliance (VApp) configurations.  

In each private cloud datacenter, the Admin should configure the Apps Library Catalogue based on an NFS Repository. Then Admins can upload templates as OVAs, template disks, or ISO disks, for example. The Service Catalogue in public cloud for templates is a cache of template details with links to the original provider templates.

For Service Providers the Apps Library Catalogue enables the provider to offer appliances and applications to their customer. For Enterprises the Apps Library Catalogue provides a central, controlled image repository so that only approved images can be deployed onto the infrastructure.

The Cloud Admin can upload VM templates from the local filesystem and may also allow Enterprise Admins to upload their own templates to the Apps Library for their users. If the enterprise is a reseller, the Cloud Admin can allow them to share templates with their tenants. 

Users can create clones of their VM disks as instance templates. In private cloud, instances are stored with the master templates in the Apps library.

Screenshot: A template and clones of VM disks created from the template (instance templates)

In private cloud datacenters, Cloud Admins can set allocation limits to ensure that no single enterprise uses all the repository space. The platform meters Repository usage and you can bill each tenant for it.

For customers running multiple Abiquo datacenters, Abiquo has a template mobility feature that can export from a private cloud datacenter to another datacenter and supported public cloud providers.

In public cloud regions, the Apps library enables you to filter and search for public cloud images. It also allows you to import the image details into the Abiquo public cloud region Apps library, which is a cache of template definitions. Here you can modify the way that Abiquo will present the public cloud templates to your users and, for example, restrict the hardware profiles that users can work with. Users can easily find and deploy the approved templates cached in the Apps Library. Users can also create instance templates to clone the disks of their VMs running in the public cloud region.

Screenshot: In public cloud the Apps library imports the details of templates from the provider and links to the provider's disk files.

In both private and public cloud, Admins can also create application blueprints called virtual appliance specs by saving the configuration of a group of VMs to the Apps library Catalogue. The user can then automatically create a new virtual appliance directly from the blueprint.