Abiquo defines a datacenter  as a set of IT resources (servers, networking and external storage) in the same physical location. From the Infrastructure view you can manage basic infrastructure elements such as networks, racks, and physical machines.  

Abiquo defines a public cloud region as a set of IT resources exposed by a supported cloud provider.

The following diagram shows a datacenter with compute resources and a public cloud region in AWS with VPCs.

Before you begin:

1. Obtain the IP address of the Remote Services server. If you are using a monolithic trial environment, this is the same as your Abiquo Server IP address

2. Check if you will require the DHCP service (it is required for standard Abiquo networking) and check the protocol to use (Omapi or Dnsmasq). See also Configure DHCP remote service with dnsmasq

   Privilege: Access infrastructure view and Private DCs, Manage datacenter

To create a datacenter do these steps:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private
2. At the bottom of the Datacenters list, click the + add button
3. On the Create datacenter dialog, enter the Name of the datacenter and its Location to plot the datacenter on the Infrastructure view map. Then click Next 
   
4. To create the datacenter remote services, enter the IP address of the remote services server for the Virtualization manager. To copy the remote service location, click Duplicate IP addresses 
   

After the platform creates the datacenter, do these steps:

• To allow users to deploy in the datacenter, edit your enterprises to add the new datacenter to the Allowed datacenters list 
• To allow administrators to manage the datacenter, edit your administration scopes and add the new datacenter 

Related pages

• UI reference for creating remote services for a datacenter: GUI Create datacenter Remote services
• Troubleshoot when you create a datacenter

A public cloud region represents a region of a cloud provider in Abiquo, to enable users to use virtual resources and deploy VMs in the cloud.

Before you begin:

• To create a public cloud region for a vCloud Director cloud, obtain credentials for the Administrator or Organization. For more details, see VMware vCloud Director integration.

To create a new public cloud region:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Public

2. Click the + add button at the bottom of the public cloud regions list. 

3. The Create public cloud region dialog will open. Enter the base Name and select the Provider. Select the Regions

   • The platform will create the first region with the Name you enter and the others with a suffix of "_1", "_2", and so on. 

   • If for some reason the platform cannot create a region, it will move on to the next region on the list
     

4. Click Next

5. In the remote services IP address field for the Virtualization manager, enter the first letters of the domain name of the remote services server and select it from the selection list
   
6. Click Save
   

   The platform will create your public cloud region.

• To allow users to deploy in the public cloud region, edit your enterprises to add the new region to the Allowed datacenters list and to add cloud provider API credentials See Obtain public cloud credentials
  
  • You will require one separate account for each enterprise using a public cloud region, i.e. one account per enterprise
  • For certain regions, such as those in China, you will require separate credentials, which you can enter separately with the appropriate provider (e.g. Amazon CHINA)
  • For vCloud Director, you will require Organization and Administrator credentials 
• To allow administrators to manage the public cloud region, edit your administration scopes and add the new region

In private cloud, to group hypervisor datastores and price them according to service levels, use datastore tiers. 

• When you use tiers, administrators or cloud users can choose the service level for VM hard disks at the level of VM templates, virtual datacenters, and VMs. 
• When you perform VM or storage moves outside of Abiquo, the platform will synchronize disks to their new datastore tiers.
• If you do not enable datastore tiers feature, all datastore disks will be created in the "Default Tier".

You can add datastores to a tier when you add a hypervisor to the platform, or from the Datastore tiers tab.

• You can only add datastores to datastore tiers if they do not have any managed VM disks on them or if none of the disks are in a tier.

To restrict the use of datastore tiers, you can make them:

• Not allowed: an enterprise cannot use a tier that is not allowed, and they cannot create disks in this tier.
• Disabled: the administrator can disable a tier, for example, for maintenance, migration, or administrative reasons.

In widgets on the Dashboard, the platform will display tiers that are allowed, and tiers that are disabled.

To create a datastore tier:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Datastore tiers
2. Click the + Add button
3. Enter the Name and Description
4. Optionally select an Abstract datastore tier to add the tier to a group to control storage service levels for tenants in more than one datacenter. See Abstract datastore tiers for storage service levels
5. Click Save
   

The platform will create the tier and allow access to all future enterprises that you create. 

To assign networks to network interfaces on your hypervisors, tag the network interfaces with "network service types". Then later, tag your networks to assign them to these network interfaces.

To create network service types:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Servers section → Network → Network service types 
2. Click the + add button 
3. Enter the Name of the network service type that the tag will represent
4. Click Save

The platform has integrations with network virtualization systems to offer features such as network blueprints, self-service firewall and load balancer policies, NAT, and VPNs. The platform uses Devices to define integrations with external systems.

Devices do the following:

• register the endpoint and credentials of the network virtualization system in a private cloud datacenter
• contain a list of the virtual datacenters that the network virtualization system is managing.

A device can be created:

1. For a datacenter
2. For a single enterprise

A device belonging to a specific enterprise has a higher priority than a device for all enterprises.

The device functionality is transparent to the cloud user, who will automatically have self-service access to networks, and firewall and load balancer policies.

To create a device to define a network virtualization system:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Datacenter details view → Network → Devices
2. Click the + add button and enter the device details
   
   For more details see GUI Create device SDN
   
   

To use a network virtualization system to manage Abiquo external and public networks, the Network Administrator must first pre-create the networks in the network virtualization systems.
Then when you create the external or public network in Abiquo, select the device for your virtualization system.

To create an excluded network:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter → Servers view → Network → Excluded
2. Click the + Add button and enter the network details
   
   For more details see GUI Add a network to exclude
   
   
3. Click Save. 
4. If users already have private networks with this range, the platform will display a warning popup. To force the creation of the excluded range, click Confirm. 

The platform will exclude the network range. Users with existing private networks within the excluded range can continue to work with them. But if the users delete the networks, they will not be able to create them again. 

As part of the Abiquo NSX integration, you can use the NAT blueprint to configure virtual datacenters with NAT.

• To configure the NSX integration, see Configure the NSX integration.

To configure NAT for a datacenter:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Network → Devices

2. To define the NSX integration in Abiquo, create a NAT device

   

To create a rack:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
2. At the bottom of the Physical servers list, click the + add button and select Rack
   
3. Enter the Name and optional values
   
4. Go to Network
   1. For Network ID min and Network ID max, enter the range of the VLAN or VXLAN tags to use on this rack for private networks
   2. In Excluded VLAN IDs, enter a comma-separated list of ranges (with a dash "-") and/or individual tags that you will use for other networks.
   3. In Reserved VLANs per VDC enter the number of VLANs that you expect VDCs to use. Note that this is not a real reservation, but it will prevent the creation of too many VDCs on the rack!
   4. In VLAN pool size enter the number of VLANs to reserve for VDCs that use more than the expected number
   
5. Click Save

Related pages:

• UI reference: GUI Create rack General information and GUI Create rack Network 
• Tune VLAN parameters for racks

To add a host (also called a server or physical machine)

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Servers
2. If there are no racks, first create a rack. See Create racks
3. Select a rack, then click the + add button. Select Physical machine
   
   
   
4. Select the Hypervisor type, which could be a standard hypervisor, master hypervisor such as vCenter, or VMware vCenter cluster as a physical machine
   • Remember when you are configuring test environments that you cannot add a vCenter more than once, for example, as a master hypervisor and as a cluster!  
5. Enter the connection details. You can enter the IP address or the FQDN of the server
   
   Using the connection details, the Discovery Manager remote services will try to retrieve the hypervisors or clusters from a master hypervisor or connect with the hypervisor or cluster.
   
   
6. For a master hypervisor, the multiple hypervisor selection dialog will open with a list of the physical machines managed by the master hypervisor. Select the ones that you wish to add and click Edit to complete their details as required. 
   
7. After the platform retrieves each host (server or "physical machine"), the Create physical machine dialog will open.

Register a physical machine in Abiquo

To register a physical machine in Abiquo, do these steps.

1. Enter the Name, which defaults to its IP address, and check the other details
   
2. Go to Network interfaces and enable at least one network interface. To do this, select the network service type of the VLANs that will use this interface
   
3. Go to Datastores and and enable at least one datastore. 

   • For vCenter clusters, use shared datastores, and if you require local datastores, add them to single-host tiers

     • When you use a shared datastore, the platform creates a different datastore on each physical machine using the datastore. This means that a shared datastore can be enabled on one host and disabled on another, either as a result of user configuration or an issue (e.g. an NFS communication error on one host).
   • Do not enable the NFS repository (usually /opt/vm_repository) because this will severely degrade deployment performance
      
4. Click Save

Related pages:

• UI Reference:
  • GUI Create physical machine General information
  • GUI Create physical machine Network interfaces
  • GUI Create physical machine IPMI. Deprecated
  • GUI Create physical machine Datastores

The platform uses allocation rules to control the scheduling of resources in datacenters, although your virtualization technology must manage the use of the resources. For details of the allocation process, see the Virtual Machine Allocation section. 

There are two types of allocation rules: Global rules apply to all datacenters and Datacenter rules apply to the selected datacenter. 

The platform uses allocation rules to control the scheduling of resources in datacenters, although your virtualization technology must manage the use of the resources. For details of the allocation process, see the Virtual Machine Allocation section. 

You can create the following types of load balance rules:

• PERFORMANCE:  select the machine with the most available resources. If more than one physical machine has the same resources available, use a round-robin algorithm to allocate each VM to a different physical machine.
• PROGRESSIVE:  select the same physical machine until it is full, then change to another one. Begin with the machine with the most available resources. Default rule

To create a global load balance rule:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
2. If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the Server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
3. Go to Allocation rules
4. On the Global panel, click the + add button
5. As the Rule type select "Load balance"

6. Select the Load balance type

The platform uses allocation rules to control the scheduling of resources in datacenters, although your virtualization technology must manage the use of the resources. For details of the allocation process, see the Virtual Machine Allocation section. 

You can create the following types of load balance rules:

• PERFORMANCE:  select the machine with the most available resources. If more than one physical machine has the same resources available, use a round-robin algorithm to allocate each VM to a different physical machine.
• PROGRESSIVE:  select the same physical machine until it is full, then change to another one. Begin with the machine with the most available resources. Default rule

A datacenter load balance rule will have priority over a global load balance rule.

To create a datacenter load balance rule:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter
2. If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
3. Go to Allocation rules
4. On the Datacenter panel, click the + add  button
5. Select Load balance as the rule type
6. Select the load balance type 

To specify the CPU and RAM load on machines, use compute load level rules. The scheduler will use these rules to help determine if a physical machine is a candidate to hold a VM. 

You can create load level rules for the following elements:

• a datacenter (all racks)
• a rack (all servers on the selected rack)
• a cluster (for supported hypervisors)
• a specific server 

You can only add one rule for an element at each level, but more than one rule may apply.

The priority order of rules is any cluster rule first (if it is present), then the other rules from the most specific rule to the least specific rule. A cluster rule affects all hosts in a cluster irrespective of their state, for example, it applies to hosts that are powered off.

To create a load level compute rule:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
2. If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the Server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
3. Go to Allocation rules
4. On the Global panel, click the Add   button
5. Select the "Load level compute" rule type

6. Complete the dialog
   

   For more details see GUI Add a new rule load level compute

To specify the storage load on machine datastores, use storage load level rules. The scheduler will use these rules to help determine if a physical machine is a candidate to hold a VM. 

You can create rules for the following elements:

• A datacenter (all datastore tiers)
• A tier (all datastores in a tier)
• A specific datastore.

If there is more than one rule that applies to a datastore, the most specific rule takes precedence over more general rules.

To create a load level storage rule:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
2. If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the Server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
3. Go to Allocation rules
4. On the Global panel, click the Add   button
5. Select the "Load level storage" rule type

6. Complete the dialog
   

   For more details see GUI Add a new rule load level storage

   
   

Hardware profiles are a convenient way of displaying CPU and RAM values that enable you to simplify the configuration of VMs for your users. They also enable you to control available hardware configurations and to recommend suitable hardware configurations for VM templates. And you can restrict users to a set of recommended configurations for a template. Abiquo has a default set of hardware profile families for public and private cloud. 

• In public cloud, you can synchronize the provider's profiles in the platform
• In private cloud and public clouds without native hardware profiles, you can create and fully manage hardware profiles and their types in the platform
• Some cloud providers may support both hardware profiles, and CPU and RAM, for example, vCloud Director

In private cloud, Abiquo supports dynamic hardware profiles for CPU and RAM, so the user can enter these values and the platform uses CPU and RAM prices for them. And the user can enter cores per socket.

In public cloud, you can onboard and synchronize price lists of hardware profiles and incorporate them into your pricing models. Note that the Azure API returns a value for cores per socket but the platform does not use this value.

In public cloud providers with hardware profiles, when you create a public cloud region and add credentials for an enterprise, Abiquo will automatically retrieve the hardware profiles for the public cloud region.

• Provider hardware profiles are locked and you cannot edit them
• In public cloud regions with provider hardware profiles that also support CPU and RAM, you can deactivate hardware profiles mode
• The platform also registers if a hardware profile is Active and if it belongs to the Current generation

To synchronize hardware profiles: 

1. Go to Infrastructure → Public → select Public cloud region → Servers view → Hardware profiles
2. At the top right of the Hardware profiles pane, select an enterprise with a public cloud account
3. Click the round arrows refresh button

By default, for each enterprise with credentials, the hardware profiles mode is enabled. By default, all hardware profiles are available to all enterprises. 

To help users to easily select the right hardware profile for their VMs, providers usually classify hardware profiles by family and type.

The platform contains one set of default families that are available in both public and private cloud.

In private cloud and in public cloud regions without native hardware profiles, you can also create your own hardware profile families and types that will be available in all of these locations.

To classify hardware profiles, first create families, then create types.

To create a hardware profile family or type:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter → Hardware profiles 
   OR Go to Infrastructure → Public → select a region without native hardware profiles → Hardware profiles
2. At the bottom of the Types list, click the + Add button and select Family or Type
3. Complete the dialog as shown below and click Save

Create a hardware profile family

For more details see GUI Create hardware profile family

Create a hardware profile type

For more details see GUI Create hardware profile type

You can create Abiquo hardware profiles in private cloud datacenters and for public cloud providers that do not have provider hardware profiles, such as vCloud Director clouds.

To create a hardware profile:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private or Public → select a location →  Hardware profiles
2. Click the + add button
3. Enter the details of the hardware profile
4. Click Save
   

For more details see GUI Create hardware profile

Each user has a role to define how they can work with resources. 

User roles have groups of privileges to allow access to different cloud features.

• Global roles are available to all enterprises, and display with "(Global)" after the name
• Enterprise roles belong to a specific enterprise, and the platform displays them when you select an enterprise.

Generally, you will assign one role to a group of users. You can clone and modify default roles to create your own roles. The Privileges page lists all the privileges and marks those assigned to each default role. 

Privileges are generally independent, for example, when the user role does not have the "Access Infrastructure view" privilege, the Infrastructure icon will not display in the UI. However, with the "Manage datacenters" and "View datacenter details" privileges, the user can access this functionality through the API.

For information about creating a reseller, see Create a Reseller and Reseller Administrator User

To create or clone a role do these steps:

1. Go to Users → Roles.
2. To clone a role, click the clone button. The platform will prefix the clone name with "Copy: ".
3. To create or modify a role, click the + Add button or Edit button and complete the following dialog and click Save.
   
   
   For more details see GUI Create role
   
   
4. Select the role and modify its privileges 

Edit user role privileges

To edit the privileges of a role do these steps:

1. If you wish to modify a local role, first select the enterprise that the role belongs to
2. Select a role in the Roles list
3. Edit the privileges, selecting or deselecting groups or individual privileges as required
   1. See Privileges for more details of existing roles
4. Click Save or discard changes by clicking outside the privileges pane, e.g. by clicking another role.

Manage roles with the API

A user scope is an access list that allows the user to access the appropriate resources in the tenant hierarchy. The platform controls access with the role, the scope, and the tenant's allowed locations. The tenant's default scope positions the tenant in an optional tenant hierarchy, and the platform assigns it to the tenant's users by default. For an administrator that can work with more than one tenant, the platform uses the Enterprises list to control access to tenants. 

To manage a complex hierarchy of resellers and/or tenants and to delegate user management and share resources, create a scope hierarchy. See the following sections:

• Manage resource scopes
• Organization hierarchy in hybrid cloud
• Create a Reseller and Reseller Administrator User

If you would like to restrict your tenants to a specific set of resources or allow administrators to access a limited group of tenants, then you can create a scope, which is an access list. We recommend that you create a scope before you create an enterprise. This means that you will give the scope access to the public cloud regions and datacenters first. Later you will edit the scope and add the tenant enterprise and any new enterprises that the tenant will directly manage. 

To create a scope do these steps:

1. Go to Users → Scopes
2. Click the + add button
3. Enter the Name
4. Optional: to add the scope to a hierarchy, select a Parent scope
5. Select Datacenters and Enterprises to include in the scope
   • The options to Use all enterprises or Use all datacenters will automatically include new enterprises or datacenters

Create a scope - General info

Create a scope - Entities

This section describes how to create a basic tenant enterprise for a cloud tenant. For more detailed information, see Manage Enterprises.

To create a basic customer enterprise do these steps:

1. Go to Users
2. At the bottom of the Enterprises list, click the + add button to add an enterprise
   

3. On the General tab

   1. Enter the customer Name
   2. As the Default scope, set the tenant scope

      • The platform will automatically add this enterprise to the scope. Note that if you change the default scope of an enteprise, the platform will not remove the enterprise from its previous scope.

   3. If the enterprise represents the tenant headquarters or similar, select Key node
      
4. Go to Allocation limits and set resource usage limits for the enterprise
   
   • A Hard limit is the maximum amount of a virtual resource (e.g. RAM) that an entity will be allowed to consume. 
   • A Soft limit warns users and administrators that the entity is running out of a resource.

   The rules for creating allocation limits are as follows:

   • You cannot have a hard limit only
   • Soft limits must always be less than or equal to hard limits
   • When a limit is equal to 0, it means that there is no limit to resource usage at this level

   • When editing limits, you cannot set the hard limits below the existing resource usage, except for Local hard disk

   
   
5. On the Datacenters tab, drag and drop providers, datacenters, or regions to Allowed datacenters, to allow the tenant's users to work in them. 
   
   
   1. To configure the tenant in each allowed location, see Configure an Enterprise in a Cloud Location
6. On the Properties tab, for each tenant metadata property, enter a key and value, and click Add
   

   To onboard all public cloud VMs into a single virtual appliance, set the singlevapp property to true. If you wish to configure the name, set the singlevapp name enterprise property:

   "sync.singlevapp":"true",
   "sync.singlevapp.name":"sync vapp name"

7. Optionally add credentials for public cloud. See Add credentials for public cloud
8. Click Save

The platform will create the enterprise and filter to display only this enterprise. 

If you already have a pricing model that is assigned to your enterprise, then the platform will use this model as the basis for the new pricing model. You can then enter a percentage markup on the costs for your enterprise.

To create a pricing model:

1. Go to Pricing → Pricing models
2. Click + add and enter details,  including resource prices, and cost code prices.
   

   

   

   
   

   Field	Description
   Name	The name of your pricing model. The name can represent a service level agreement
   Description	Description of pricing model
   Change all resource prices	Only displays when the enterprise already has a pricing model assigned to it. Resellers can change all prices by adding this percentage. See below
   Charging period	Standard period of time by which a user will be charged, such as day, week, etc. Does not have to be equal to the minimum period
   Minimum charging period	Minimum period of time that a user will be charged for. This may be longer or shorter than the charging period. This value is not sent to the billing system. Note that the accounting system records the maximum usage value of a resource during an accounting period.
   Currency	The currency for this pricing model. Enter new currencies in the Currency tab before you create the pricing model
   Standing charge	Standing charge per Charging period. You can include this value in the pricing estimate message but the platform does not send it to the billing system
   Minimum charge	Minimum charge per Minimum charging period. You can include this value in the pricing estimate message but the platform does not send it to the billing system
   Show charges before deployment	Mark this checkbox to show a pricing estimate popup before deployment with the message entered in the box at the bottom of the window. See the explanation below
   Insert variable	Choose a variable from the pull-down list to add to the pricing estimate message. The variables are described in the table below
   Deployment message	Enter the estimate message for VM deployment, including variables. See Create a pricing estimate message

   The platform uses the first pricing model for a location in a currency as the set of base prices for the location. When you create a new pricing model, you can enter a percentage to modify prices. If you then enter a resource price that is lower than the base price, the platform will highlight the price.

   
   

    Click here to show/hide the screenshot

   The price for hypervisor datastores is below the cost price for the reseller.

   

   
   

   

   

   
   

   Field	Description
   Hypervisor Datastores GB	Price of hypervisor datastores per gigabyte. In public cloud regions, the platform does not use this value
   VLANs	Price per VLAN (at least one VLAN is always created for each virtual datacenter)
   Public IPs	Price per public IP address reserved
   CPU	Price per virtual CPU core for deployed virtual machines. If the location uses hardware profiles, pricing does not use this value.
   CPU on CPU off	Price per virtual CPU core when virtual machine is powered ON or OFF
   Memory (GB)	Price of virtual memory in GB for deployed virtual machine. If the location uses hardware profiles, pricing does not use this value.
   Memory on Memory off (GB)	Price of virtual memory in GB when virtual machine is powered ON or OFF
   Virtual machine	Fee per VM in addition to charges for other VM items
   Virtual machine on Virtual machine off	Fee per VM in addition to charges for other VM items
   Repository (GB)	Price of template repository use in GB for virtual machine templates. The platform does not include conversions. In public cloud regions, the platform does not use this value
   Anti-Affinity	Price per VM deployed in anti-affinity layer. In public cloud regions, the platform does not use this value
   Firewall	Price per firewall attached to VM
   Load balancer	Price per load balancer attached to VM
   DR protected VM	Price per VM protected with disaster recovery

   The provider can configure billing by usage or allocation.

   
   

   Datastore tiers

   In a private cloud datacenter, datastore tiers set service levels for storage. See Manage Datastore Service Levels with Datastore Tiers.

   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Persistent storage

   In a private cloud datacenter, persistent storage tiers set service levels for storage. See Manage Storage

   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Hardware profiles

   In public cloud and in private cloud datacenters with hardware profiles, see Hardware profiles.

   
   

   Privilege: View datacenter details, Manage enterprises

   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Cost Code Prices

   The cost codes for assigning to templates and hardware profiles, and their prices.

    

   
   

To assign a pricing model to the enterprise, do these steps:

1. Go to Users → Edit enterprise
2. Go to Pricing
3. Select the Pricing model from the list
   

You can also assign pricing models at Pricing → Pricing models → Enterprise associations.

To create a tenant administrator user:

1. Go to Users → Optionally, select an enterprise → Users tab
2. Click the + add button to add a user and complete the dialog
   1. Role: select ENTERPRISE_ADMIN or similar
   2. Scope: select a scope that contains the enterprise/s that the administrator will manage, for example, to manage users
3. Click Save

For more details see GUI Create user General information

For more details see GUI Create user Advanced

Cloud networks are the virtual networks that administrators configure to deliver self-service IP addresses to the VMs.

The cloud network types supported by Abiquo are as follows:

• Private Networks within virtual datacenters (in private and public cloud)
• External Networks accessible from outside the virtual datacenter and outside the platform, and assigned to a single tenant. Used in private cloud with standard networking and integrations.
• Unmanaged Networks with IP addresses managed outside of Abiquo only, and assigned to a single tenant. Used in private cloud
• Public Networks with public IP addresses and Internet access and can be shared by multiple tenants. Used in private cloud
• Public IPs in public cloud, such as AWS Elastic IPs.  

The external, unmanaged, and public networks may be collectively referred to as 'datacenter networks' because they are managed at the Abiquo datacenter level.

Public Networks allow the users of virtual datacenters to use Internet addressable public IP addresses in their virtual infrastructure. Users purchase or reserve public IPs for their enterprises in Virtual datacenters view.

To create a public network:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Datacenter details → Network → Public
2. Complete the dialog
   v50_inf_pri_net_pub-Create_network-Public-IPv6.png
   

External networks belong to a single enterprise and may have public or private IP address ranges used in more than one virtual datacenter.

An external network in the platform represents a network that exists in the infrastructure, so you will need the network details:  

• network address
• gateway

• VLAN or VXLAN tag.

To create an external network:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Servers view → Network → External

2. Click the + add button  and enter the details
   

   For more details see GUI Create network External

To add a Static Route when you create or edit an IPv4 network:

1. Select the Define checkbox. 
2. Enter the details of the static route. 
   For example, to add a static route to the network/netmask 1.1.1.0/24 via the gateway/next hop 192.168.0.250
   
   
   For more details see GUI Create network Static routes
   
   
3. Click Save and the platform will add the static routes to the VM network configuration. 

To add IP addresses to your network:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Servers view → Network → External or Public
2. Click the + Add button in the top right-hand corner
3. Complete the dialog
   
   For more details see GUI Create IP addresses

After you create public, external, or NAT IP addresses, they will be available to users for their virtual datacenters.  

We recommend that you should make unavailable any IP addresses that will be used for administration purposes, for example, the IPv4 gateway network address.

To edit the available IP addresses:

1. Go Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Servers view → Network → select network type
2. Click Available IPs
3. The Edit network dialog for Available IPs will open and by default, all IPs are in the Available column

• To move an IP, select it and click a single arrow button
• To move all IPs in the direction of the arrows, use the double arrow buttons

In private cloud datacenters, unmanaged networks are a special type of external network with IP addresses that are allocated outside of the platform. Abiquo does not manage the IP addresses for VMs attached to these networks.

Before you begin, obtain the details of your network in the infrastructure, including the VLAN tag, network address, and gateway.

To create unmanaged networks do these steps:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Datacenter details → Network → External.
2. At the top of the External page, click the Add + button  
3. Complete the dialog as described, marking the Unmanaged checkbox.

For more details see GUI Create network Unmanaged

To display IP addresses of NICS in unmanaged networks, add them:

• using the API; or
• during VM capture using the UI or API 

For strict IPv6 networks, you cannot add IP addresses, but the platform retrieves the MAC address from the hypervisor and uses that to generate an IPv6 address for display, which should be the same as the one allocated by the router system.

To use NAT in private cloud, first configure the NSX integration, then define the NAT device. NAT networks are very similar to public networks.

To use NAT in vCloud Director, you will need the definition of a NAT network that is compatible with an Edge interface network, which connects the Edge to the external networks.

To create a NAT network: 

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private or Public → select datacenter or region → Servers view → Network → NAT

2. Click the + add button

3. Create networks with ranges of public IPs for NAT

   

   For more details see GUI Create NAT network

4. To add IP addresses to your network, click the + add button in the top right-hand corner of the Networks page.

   
   For more details see GUI Create IP addresses

The NAT network and IPs will display on the NAT tab. In the same way as for public IPs, you can quarantine NAT IPs as required.

Screenshot: NAT networks and IPs in private cloud with NSX

When users create virtual datacenters, the platform can automatically configure a NAT IP, and users can manage NAT rules, and purchase additional NAT IPs. See Manage NAT for virtual datacenters

Before you begin:

• In Azure, before you create a virtual datacenter, Create a resource group and optionally Create an availability set.

To create a new virtual datacenter:

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters view
2. Above the V. datacenters list, click the + add button
3. Select Create a new virtual datacenter from the pull-down menu
4. Complete the dialog as described below
5. Click Save

General information

This section describes the basic details to enter when creating a virtual datacenter. The following sections describe further configuration.

For more details see GUI Create virtual datacenter General information

Create a virtual datacenter with custom networks

Manage resource allocation limits for a virtual datacenter

Set virtual datacenter defaults

Limit user access to the virtual datacenter

After you have entered Allocation limits, Defaults, and Role, click Save.

The platform will create the virtual datacenter and the default private VLAN and display it in the Virtual datacenters view. 

Create a virtual datacenter using the API

In a private cloud datacenter, when you a hypervisor or cluster to Abiquo, it may already have VMs running on it, and you can import (retrieve) and capture these VMs.

When you import (also called "retrieve") VMs, they are registered in Abiquo but not managed by Abiquo. The platform will take into account the resources they use when scheduling and allocating resources, and track their state as part of the virtual infrastructure check. The platform will also include them to improve the accuracy of resource usage statistics.

You can then capture (also called "onboard") imported VMs so they will be managed by the platform. When you capture a VM it is almost identical to a VM created in Abiquo. The main difference is that when you capture a VM, Abiquo does not have a copy of the template disks in the Apps library. This means that you cannot automatically create a fresh copy of the VM with the same configuration and the template disks, by undeploying the VM and deploying it again to copy the template from the Apps library. When you capture a VM, to store the disks in the Apps library, you can create an Abiquo instance template, which you can then use to create a fresh copy of the VM.

Importing, capturing, releasing and removing VMs from the platform does not change them in the infrastructure; these operations only determine which operations the platform can perform on them.

This diagram shows steps to import and capture VMs that were created outside of Abiquo.

Import and capture of individual VMs is only available in private cloud. To capture resources from public cloud regions, onboard them as part of regions or virtual datacenters. See Manage Virtual Datacenters#Onboardfrompubliccloud

What does Abiquo import?

To import VMs (also called retrieve VMs), the physical machine must be in an Abiquo private cloud datacenter, or in the process of being added to one. You do not need to enable a datastore to import VMs that are running on the datastore.

• You can import VMs with disks that are located on external volumes with the configuration described below

What does Abiquo capture?

Abiquo captures the following VM configuration:

• CPU and RAM including hardware profiles
• Remote access configuration for VNC, including the password. But if there is no password, the platform disables remote access
  
  • If a user later releases a VM, the changes made in the platform will remain in the VM
• MAC addresses of compatible NICs and their VLAN tags and network details. Abiquo recommends that your VMs should have at least one NIC
  • Exception: Abiquo does not capture NICs on IPv6 networks
  • You can configure Abiquo to capture the DHCP configuration, see Abiquo Configuration Properties#capturedhcp
• Hard disks in compatible formats on the hypervisor datastores. See Template Compatibility Table
  • For ESXI, the platform will capture DVDs without a defined position in the boot order as ISO disks in the last position in the VM's boot sequence

When you capture a VM from NSX-T, you must add the VM to a VDC with the same network as the VM network. The platform will match the network by provider ID, not by VLAN tag as in the NSX-V integration.

During capture the platform will skip incompatible VMs and incompatible virtual hardware components.

• The platform does not add the virtual datacenter's default firewall policy to a VM as part of the capture process
• You can capture VMs with disks that are located on external storage volumes with the configuration described below
  • The platform does not capture VMs with external storage volumes in position 0 in the disk sequence. The boot disk must always be a "hard disk" on the hypervisor datastore

Configure Abiquo to Import and Capture VMs with Volumes

• For ESXi, to import VMs with disks that are located on external volumes, set the "abiquo.experimental.capturewithvolumes.bypass" property on the Abiquo Server
• For ESXi, to capture VMs with volumes (except in position 0 in the disk sequence), set the "abiquo.experimental.capturewithvolumes.bypass" property on the Abiquo Server
  • The platform can capture the VMs but it does not register the external storage volumes as VM resources
  • After you capture the VMs, you can add the volumes to the platform as Generic iSCSI volumes
  • If you do not add the volumes as Generic iSCSI volumes and you wish to add more external volumes, in order to prevent issues with the unregistered volumes, add volumes to a new SCSI controller of a different type

Before you capture a VM

1. Obtain the details of the networks that the VM belongs to (VLAN tag, network address, netmask), and the IP address(es) of the VM

2. Identify or create these networks and IPs in Abiquo, unless the VM is only in a default private network that Abiquo will manage

    Click here to show/hide the screenshot

   

3. You will need to add the captured VM to a virtual datacenter (VDC), so if necessary, create a VDC. In order to do this, you will need to have already added a hypervisor of the same type as the one you are capturing from.

   1. If the VM uses a public IP, purchase the appropriate public IP. Go to Virtual datacenters → select virtual datacenter → Network → Public and click the + Add button

       Click here to show/hide the screenshot

      

4. If you wish to add a new cost code to the VM, create the cost code in Pricing view before you capture the VM

To retrieve or import VMs from a physical machine:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → Servers
2. For a new physical machine, add the physical machine and to automatically import VMs, select the Retrieve existing virtual machines checkbox
3. For an existing physical machine, select the physical machine, and click the Retrieve virtual machines button

The imported VMs will appear in the list with the imported symbol . If duplicate VMs display, you may have clicked the retrieve button while an import process was already running. To remove duplicates, click the Remove unmanaged virtual machines button and then retrieve the VMs again.

To onboard a VM that you already imported into the platform:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter → Servers → select a physical machine
2. Select the VM and on the VM details panel, click the Capture VM button 
   

3. The Capture virtual machine dialog will open, listing all the compatible virtual appliances

    Click here to show/hide the screenshot

   

   Select the virtual appliance in the VDC with the network address, or create a new virtual appliance by clicking the + Add button.

4. Click Accept to capture the VM

5. Review the General Information of the captured VM

   

   1. Optionally select a cost code for the VM

   • After capture, you can reconfigure the VM to enable remote access. On vCenter, configure WebMKS access to enable hot reconfigure of remote access on captured VMs

6. Configure and assign the corresponding network and IP configuration to each NIC. Select a default gateway.
   
   

7. Review hard disks that Abiquo will capture
   

8. After reviewing the VM configuration, click Accept to continue. The platform will now capture the VM

The captured VM will have the Release VM button on its VM details panel. The platform will now fully manage captured VM.

If the virtual appliance was deployed before the capture, the new VM will be added to the virtual appliance but no other changes will be made. If the virtual appliance was undeployed (and contained VMs) before the capture, afterwards it will be deployed and in the Partially deployed state.

Note: For networker, the vCenter credentials are mandatory. Networker uses these credentials for the "Restore a VM when it is not allocated" option

Support for Backup now

General info

Backup description

After you enter the General info, select the backup type:

• The Abiquo backup integrations only support Complete backups

Complete backup

Example backup configuration of Complete backup

For each field in the backup type, the Cloud Admin can choose how to set the values: