This document walks through the features that support resellers on the Abiquo multicloud platform and describes the easy steps to set up a reseller hierarchy in the platform.

Reseller features

This section describes the features of the Abiquo multicloud platform that support resellers and their customers in both private cloud and public cloud (Azure CSP and Amazon resellers in the APN).

Reseller hierarchy

Cloud reseller white labelling

Managed services with VDC roles

Outsource cloud services with restricted VApps

Dashboard billing widgets

The dashboard widgets import billing data from public cloud, for Amazon, Azure and Google, and it also supports the addition of custom billing data via API. It displays the latest bills and the estimated bills. The administrator can configure the dashboard to display data for reseller and partner accounts and their customers, as well as for customers who wish to use accounts that were obtained directly from the provider. The platform controls the display of the hybrid billing dashboard with privileges. This feature requires the reseller or tenant to configure programmatic billing in the provider. 

Screenshot: Details of the latest bills

Screenshot: Estimated bill

Generate public cloud billing data

Administrators can request an update of public cloud billing on demand if they have the privilege to Generate billing. The administrator edits an enterprise and goes to the Credentials tab, and then clicks the play arrow Generate billing button beside the Create account button.

On the Generate billing dialog, the administrator can enter the dates to generate bills for, and select the enterprises, including enterprises in their reseller hierarchy.

Import public cloud price lists

See Synchronize public cloud price lists.

Cost usage reports by VM hours

 {
    "usageStartTime" : "2020/04/01 00:00:00 +0000",
    "usageEndTime" : "2020/04/30 23:59:59 +0000",
    "resellerCode" : "codeResellerA",
    "keyNodeName" : "keyNodeA1",
    "enterpriseId" : 2,
    "enterpriseName" : "Enterprise A12",
    "internalCustomerId" : "contractKeyNodeA1",
    "hours" : 144,
    "priceFirstInterval" : 3.00000,
    "costFirstIntervalPrice" : 432.00000,
    "weightedPrice" : 1.54545455,
    "cost" : 222.54545520,
    "currencyCode" : "USD",
    "conversionFactor" : 1.00000,
    "costApplyingConversionFactor" : 222.5454552000000,
    "startBillingPeriod" : "2020/04/01 00:00:00 +0000",
    "endBillingPeriod" : "2020/04/30 23:59:59 +0000",
    "links" : [ ]
  }

Administer a hierarchy and delegate administration

The platform makes it easy to administer a hierarchy because usually an administrator will only manage their own tenant's users and those in their direct scope. And they will manage templates and blueprints for their own tenant. The administrator can then delegate administration to scopes beneath their scope. And share VM templates and configuration blueprints with them. So, for example, a resellers' customers could manage their own users, local VM templates, and so on. And these customers can even have their own hierarchies and delegate administration to their departments.

Tenant metadata

Administrators can store metadata for each tenant, for example, an account ID, as well as values of provider pricing markups, currencies, and so on.  To store metadata, administrators create enterprise properties, which have a key and a value. Cloud administrators can create hidden, read-only, read-write properties

Tenant administrators can usually display read-only properties and create and update read-write properties.

Creating a reseller hierarchy

In Abiquo administrators create an organization hierarchy using Scopes. First of all, the cloud administrator should define the tenants (enterprises) that a user will administer (users, templates, etc), and create an access list, which is the User scope. Then they should define the related enterprises, for which they will delegate administration. These access lists will also be scopes, but below the user's scope in the hierarchy, as child scopes of the parent scope. The cloud administrator can create a tree structure with as many levels as necessary. 

For billing and reporting, the cloud administrator can define the "top of the branch" enterprises, which could be the customer headquarters or similar.

Create scopes to define a reseller hierarchy

An Abiquo scope is an access list that you can assign to tenants and you can define the scope hierarchy by selecting a Parent scope of the scope.

First we create a scope for the reseller, which is below the Global scope.

We will select the locations that an administrator with this scope can manage. 

Then we will create a scope for a customer tenant of the reseller. The customer scope has the reseller scope as its parent scope. Select the cloud providers and datacenters and later add the enterprise to its own scope.

In this case, we create the scopes first and select the locations that the administrators can manage. Later we will add the enterprises to their scopes. This means that the administrators in these enterprises can manage the users, templates, and so on.

Create reseller enterprises

To create a reseller enterprise, you should mark the enterprise with the Reseller flag. You will also need to enter pricing credentials, the provider discount, and create a base pricing model. Remember that you can only have one reseller per scope (enterprise default scope). When you configure the billing dashboard, enter the reseller's credentials. The platform will then identify the reseller's customers using their compute credentials, for example, the AWS access ID. 

See Create a reseller enterprise

Create reseller pricing models

The platform provides a pricing estimate for deploying a virtual appliance when the user clicks the pricing button, usually marked with a currency symbol.

An administrator can assign the same pricing model to multiple enterprises and clone pricing models to create new ones. Administrators can set resource prices per location in multiple currencies. Administrators can use cost codes to set prices for templates and hardware profiles. The platform combines pricing models with usage data to generate billing data that is output in CSV files. 

For resellers, the platform can import prices for hardware profiles from public cloud. The pricing model from a reseller is the base for a pricing model for the customers created by the reseller. The reseller can set markup for customers, on top of the base pricing model. Customers can only display their own prices.

Create a reseller pricing model and assign it to your resellers.  For more details, see Create a new pricing model and  Create reseller pricing models.

Create reseller administrators

To create a reseller administrator, you will first need to define their role, with the privileges they will have to perform actions on the platform.

A reseller role with minimum restrictions could grant the administrator the following privileges:

• All dashboard privileges
• No infrastructure privileges
• Most virtual datacenter privileges (except those for infrastructure or system administrator features)
• Most virtual appliance privileges (except those for infrastructure or system administrator features)
• Most Apps library privileges (except those for global and infrastructure features)
• Most user privileges (except those to manage roles, and reseller enterprises) 
• No system configuration privileges, except access to reports
• Event privileges for the current enterprise
• All control privileges.

The cloud administrator can create reseller customer enterprises centrally or delegate this work to the reseller, in which case the reseller administrator will require the Manage enterprises privilege. Note that this will mean that reseller administrator can also edit their own enterprise if it is in their scope.

Screenshot: Create the user and assign the reseller administrator role.

Create a customer pricing model

To ensure that the appropriate base pricing model is available, the reseller administrator with pricing privileges should log in to create the customer pricing model.  

Create a reseller customer 

You can create a customer with one or more tenant enterprises. The main customer enterprise is the "key node" of each customer organization, for example, it would represent the headquarters of an organization.

When you create the main customer enterprise, mark the Key node flag. If this enterprise is the customer of a public cloud reseller, then you do not need to enter pricing credentials. You should create tenant properties for markup, and a customer ID. The platform will automatically propagate pricing models and price lists to this tenant, with markup. Remember that you can only have one key node per scope (Enterprise default scope). You should then create any other enterprises to represent other parts of the customer organization, for example, departments of a business, stores in a retail chain.

Create customer accounts

Display public cloud price lists