After you log in, you may need to edit your user account to update your details:

1. Click the User icon in the lower left-hand corner of the screen
   
2. From the menu, select Edit user
   
3. Change your Password
4. To receive VM passwords, login authentication codes, and email notifications, enter your E-mail address and Phone number
   
   
5. Go to Advanced and add your Public key for remote access to VMs
   

If you are using a single sign on, you may need to ask your system administrator to update your details

Your platform may offer or require two-factor authentication (2fa) to improve user login security with an additional authentication code. For platform configuration instructions, see Configure two factor authentication.

Before you begin:

• To use Google Authenticator to obtain the codes, install the Google Authenticator app on your cell phone. 
• To use email authentication to obtain the codes, check that you have a valid email address in your user account on the platform.

To enable two-factor authentication for your user account, do these steps:

1. Click on the user initials or user icon in the lower left corner of the screen, and from the menu, select Two-factor authentication.
2. Select the authentication method and click Enable

3. Copy the Backup codes from the configuration window to a secure place. You can use these codes to log in to the platform if the authentication cycle fails

   The platform will display Backup codes ONCE only

4. Authenticate according to your selected method
   • For Google Authenticator, use the Google Authenticator app on your cell phone to scan the QR code. Google will supply a verification code in the app. During login, the platform will request the Authentication code from the app. 
   • For email, during login, every time you enter your user name and password to log in, a code will be sent to the E-mail address registered in your user account. Enter the Authentication code in the Login dialog

You can use VM templates to create VMs in your cloud environments.

To display VM templates

1. Select Private or Public
2. Select a Datacenter or Public cloud region from the list
   • If you do not see the expected templates, you may need to click the double round-arrow Refresh button beside the Datacenter name or contact your system administrator
3. Optionally select a template Category
4. Optionally select icon or list view

On the right, the platform will display all the templates available for the selected datacenter or public cloud region

Icon view

In Icon view, to activate the VM template operations menu, select a VM template. This menu will vary, depending on the context.

Screenshot: Options menu of VM template

Screenshot: Options menu of a VM instance template, created from VM disks

In list view, to display the VM Template operations buttons, select a VM template. 

To make new VM templates available in the platform, add them to your Apps library (Catalogue)

In private cloud datacenters you can upload VM templates from a local filesystem in different formats:

• upload OVA file (including multiple disks) or
• upload an ISO file or
• upload a single disk file.

This document describes how to upload an OVA file from a local file system to create a VM template.

Before you begin, check these requirements:

1. The platform reads OVA files such as those created with VMware. 
2. The file name must end in the extension ".ova". 
3. You can upload a multi-disk template for a single VM (virtual system)
4. The OVA file must contain an OVF description file for the template. 
5. The platform uses the Name tag in the VirtualSystem as the template name. If the Name is not set, the platform falls back to the ID. See OVF Reference.  

To add a new template from an OVA file

1. Go to Apps library

2. In the Private cloud section, select the datacenter

3. On the Virtual machine templates tab, at the bottom of the templates panel, click the + add button

4. Select Create from OVA file
   
   
5. Click Select file and browse for the file.
   
   Abiquo will display the File name.
6. Click Save. Abiquo will upload the file and create the template.
   When the template has been uploaded, Abiquo will open the Edit template dialog.
7. Check the template details.
   For more details of how to edit a template, see Modify a VM Template
   To add OVA parameters to all VMs, add them as Variables. See Deploy a VM from an OVA with parameters.
8. Click Save

In private cloud, to create VM templates from a remote repository, do these steps:

1. Go to Apps library Catalogue

2. In the Private cloud section, select the datacenter

3. On the Virtual machine templates tab, at the bottom of the templates panel, click the + add button

4. Select Create from remote template repository
   
   
5. Select a Repository, then select a Category or All categories. 
   The Packages pane will display the available template definitions with an icon, title and brief description
6. Optionally, click on Show disks
7. For each VM template to download, select the checkbox next to the template definition
8. To start the download, click the Download button
   
   1. The platform will check that this template download will not exceed the repository limits for your enterprise or your enterprise in the datacenter.
   2. A status bar will appear next to the selected packages showing the download state.
      

If a template belongs to a Category in the remote template repository but the Category does not exist in the Apps library, the platform will create it for the download.

You can now work with the new VM template.

To import a template from a public cloud region into the platform's template cache, do the following steps:

1. Go to Apps library → Public → select the public cloud region
2. Then click the + add button at the bottom of the screen
   

3. The Import template popup will open

4. Enter the search criteria for your template
   

   1. In the ID field, you can enter an ID, such as an AMI ID
      1. In Google Cloud Platform, you can enter a full path ID, for example, ubuntu-os-cloud/global/images/ubuntu-2004-focal-v20220308
   2. In the Name field, you can enter text to search for in the name 
   3. Select Private templates to display images that are only available to your user account in the public cloud provider. 
      1. In vCloud Director this option displays templates in the same organization as your user
      2. In OCI, to search for private templates, you must search by the template ID only.

   Then click Search to perform the search. The search can take some time and return several pages of templates

5. To import a template, click the import symbol in the top right-hand corner of the template

   1. If your Azure template has terms of use, then you will need to accept these now or when you first create a VM from the template. 
      1. Accepting the terms of use requires the privilege to Manage virtual machine template terms of use and it enables programmatic deployment of the template for your Azure subscription. If you then disable programmatic deployment in the portal but you would like to deploy the template, you will need to delete it from the platform and import it again.
      2. If you share the template with another enterprise, then a user of that enterprise will need to accept the terms of use before they can create a VM

   When a template has been imported, the color of the import symbol will change to gray

6. When you have finished importing templates click Close
   

You can now edit your template to customize it for your users, which includes:

• Add custom icon
• Add variables for startup scripts
• Share template with users in a tenant hierarchy
• Recommend and restrict hardware profiles
• Set default template credentials and configure initial password
• Add tags

For more details, see Modify a VM Template

To quickly create and/or deploy a VM from a VM template:

1. Go to Apps library → Virtual machine templates 
2. Select a VM template and from the options menu, select Create VM
   
3. Enter a Name, which will be the VM Label
4. Select a virtual datacenter or create a new one
5. Select a virtual appliance or create a new one
   

You can now deploy directly, or go to the virtual appliance, in order to edit the VM.

It is also possible to open the advanced configuration before you deploy.

Before you begin:

1. Log in or switch enterprises to the tenant that owns the template

To modify a VM template:

1. Select the template and click on the control menu button in the top-right corner and select Edit
   
   

In private cloud datacenters, standard templates have disks that will deploy to the hypervisor datastore, in contrast to persistent templates that have disks on external storage volumes. This documentation describes standard templates.

Edit template General information

For more details see GUI Edit template General information

• In private cloud, when the datastore tier is mandatory for template disks, the platform marks the disks with a star symbol
• To download a template disk, click the down arrow download button beside the disk

To share a template with the enterprises in one or more scopes, select template scopes.

To remove enterprise access to a template, remove the scope containing the enterprise. 

• You cannot remove a scope from the template if an enterprise in the scope is using the template, for example, if it has deployed VMs or instances of VMs. 

To make a template private to the owner enterprise, unselect all scopes.

Hardware profiles

Datastore tiers

In the Virtual datacenters view you can manage your compute, network and storage resources. Each virtual datacenter (VDC) is a separate cloud environment in a single datacenter or public cloud region. To access Virtual datacenters view, click the cloud virtual datacenters button.

To display all the virtual datacenters in specific providers, click the funnel filter button at the top of the list and select one or more providers.

The Cloud locations section contains virtual resources that belong to a datacenter or public cloud region.

To access the Cloud locations section, the user must be able to access All virtual datacenters, which means that they have the privilege "No VDC restriction" or the administrator did not limit their access to any specific virtual datacenters. 

To display and manage the virtual resources in the Cloud locations section:

1. Go to Cloud view
2. Click the pinpoint Locations button
3. Select a location

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

You can use availability sets to ensure high availability for your VMs in Azure. Each VM in the availability set will deploy on separate, isolated hardware, in a cluster. This is similar to the platform's concept of anti-affinity layers in private cloud. To attach Azure VMs to a load balancer, you must add them to the same Availability set. All of the VMs in an Availability set must be in the same Azure Virtual Network, which means they must be in the same virtual datacenter but they can belong to different Resource groups.

To create an availability set:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters
2. Go to Locations → select a location OR
   select an Azure virtual datacenter
3. Go to Network → Availability sets
4. Click the + add button
5. Complete the dialog and click Save
   
   For more details see GUI Create availability set

Cloud administrators, before you begin:

1. To optionally limit the user to a list of resources, create a scope for the user
2. Choose a role with the appropriate privileges or create a role

To create a user:

1. Optionally, select another enterprise if you manage users in multiple enterprises, and you want to create the user in an enterprise that you are not logged into
2. Click the + Add button and complete the dialog

Enter general user details

For more details see GUI Create user General information

Restrict a user to a set of virtual datacenters

For more details see GUI Create user Limit access to VDCs

Enter advanced user details

For more details see GUI Create user Advanced

If you need to stop a user from working with or logging in to the platform on a temporary basis, you can suspend the user account.

To suspend a user account:

1. Go to Users → Select user
2. Click the pencil edit button. The user dialog will open
3. Go to Advanced, and unselect the Activated checkbox

The platform will suspend the account. When a user account is suspended, the platform will log the user out immediately. Be careful not to disable your own account! Fortunately, the main cloud administrator account cannot be disabled.

To enable the user account again, select the Activated checkbox.

If the user makes too many failed login attempts, the platform will automatically suspend their account for the account lock duration or until it is enabled by an administrator.

If a user cannot automatically reset their password or if the user account is locked for too many password attempts, you can manually reset the password and unlock the account. 

To manually reset a user password:

1. Open the Users view and select the user
2. Click the Edit button at the top-right of the Users page. The user form will open.
3. Enter the new password
4. Recommended: go to Advanced and select the checkbox to Reset password on next login
5. If the user account is locked and you wish to unlock it, go to Advanced, and select the Activated option
6. Click Save. If the user is currently logged in, they will be automatically logged out when you save a new password,

The user password will be reset. Notify the user of their new password.

To display the users in card view, select the card view tab from the view selectors in the top right-hand corner.

To display groups of users, click on the pages to display the following:

• All users on the All page

• Active users on the Activated page

• Suspended users on the Suspended page

To filter users and display only those with a certain text in the user details:

1. Go to Users view → Users
2. In the filter box on the right-hand side, enter a text string to search for which can include wildcards.
   For more details about how the platform's search works, see Search for VMs and filter the search

The user status is displayed either by a colored dot in the Activated column or in the colored tag on the user card:

• Green for active accounts
• Red for suspended accounts
  
  • Red with padlock symbol for accounts suspended automatically after too many failed login attempts 

To delete a user:

1. Select the user account and click the Delete button
2. Confirm the delete

Abiquo will delete the user account but the user's VMs and other resources will remain on the cloud platform and users in the same enterprise with the appropriate permissions can work with them.

To display classic VMs in public cloud:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters
2. Click the + Add button and select Synchronize public cloud
3. Select the public cloud region

4. Click the See classic link

To update a virtual datacenter and onboard any changes made in the provider, synchronize the virtual datacenter:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → V. Datacenters list
2. Beside the virtual datacenter Name, click the round arrow Synchronize button

To synchronize specific resources such as networks, public IPs, and so on:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → select the resource tab
2. Click the round arrow Synchronize button for the resource. 

For more information, see the resource documentation.

When administrators delete resources in the provider, the platform will display the resource name in light gray to indicate that the user cannot work with the resource. The resource types include:

• External networks
• Firewalls 
• Classic firewalls 
• Load balancers 
• NAT network
• NAT IPs

To delete these resources (if they are not in use), select the resource and click the delete button.

The virtual resources that you onboarded or created in public cloud will be grouped with their associated virtual datacenters.

Before you begin:

1. If you recently created virtual resources, such as load balancers, synchronize the virtual datacenter to ensure that the platform can find all the dependencies of the virtual datacenter.

To delete onboarded resources in public cloud:

1. Delete each virtual datacenter
   • You can choose to delete each virtual datacenter in the platform only, or in the platform and the provider. 
   • If you delete in the platform only, the platform will automatically remove VMs, virtual appliances, load balancers, public IPs, and firewalls from the virtual datacenter. It will not delete the firewalls
   • When you delete a virtual datacenter, public IPs that are not attached to VMs will remain in the provider and the synchronization process will delete them
   • Remember to check which is the default VDC in your provider, e.g. AWS default VPC, because it may be inconvenient to delete this VPC

The platform onboards and synchronizes virtual resources in public cloud regions for providers that do not use virtual datacenters or similar entities, for example, Google Cloud Platform. You can only synchronize these providers at the public cloud region level. You cannot synchronize a VDC or an individual resource, for example, a load balancer. 

If your public cloud provider does not support virtual datacenter entities, to onboard virtual resources do the following steps:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters
2. At the bottom of the V. Datacenters list, click the + add button
3. Select Synchronize public cloud
4. Select a public cloud region

The platform will place all VMs and network resources that are not related to existing virtual resources into a generic virtual datacenter. The platform names this virtual datacenter with the same name as the public cloud region, but the user can rename it. The platform will use this virtual datacenter for future synchronizations, adding or removing resources to match the cloud provider.

If there are already virtual resources in the platform for this provider, then these entities will already be part of a virtual datacenter. The platform will check if any new entities in the provider are related to the existing ones in the platform and place them in the existing virtual datacenter.

If the integration with the provider supports entities that are not in a virtual datacenter, such as firewalls, load balancers, or floating IPs, the platform may load these as separate entities.

If conflicts occur during synchronization, the platform will cancel the synchronization. This could occur if two VMs already exist in different VDCs but are related by a firewall or load balancer. Or if two firewall policies or load balancers exist in different virtual datacenters but are related by a VM.

The virtual appliance specifications (VApp specs) feature enables administrators to save complex virtual appliance configurations and present them to users for simple, self-service deployment across their virtual datacenters. Specs are similar to blueprints because the platform uses them to define the configurations to recreate. Administrators select the locations where users can work with each spec, including datacenters and public cloud regions, such as AWS and Azure ARM.

With specs, you can save the configuration of virtual appliances including VMs, storage, networks, monitoring, Chef, firewalls, and load balancers. When users create a new virtual appliance based on a spec (also referred to as to "materialize" a spec), the platform will automatically use existing virtual resources or create new ones for this virtual appliance.

The limitations of specs are as follows:

• Specs do not store data from VM disks; they use template disks only
• Specs do not support external networks and NICs or unmanaged networks and NICs
  • In vCloud, specs have basic support for external networks
• Specs do not support scaling groups

Users should also be aware of differences in features between private and public cloud environments.

Manage VApp specs in the user interface

What do virtual appliance specs save and create?

 Click here to show/hide table of what specs save and create

The following VM configuration elements are saved and created by virtual appliance specs. Support for elements is marked for datacenters (DC) and public cloud regions (PCR). When creating a virtual appliance from a spec, the platform will assign the spec icon to the virtual appliance.

Element	Save in Spec	Create in VApp from saved configuration
VMs	General information: hardware profiles, CPU, RAM, remote access and description	Same. If a matching hardware profile is not found, the platform will activate or create one, or the user can select another available hardware profile
Anti-affinity layers	VMs in layers	Same
Scaling groups	Scaling groups are not supported
VM templates	Template name is saved	The system matches the spec template name against the Apps library template name. The user selects from a list of templates with names that contain the spec template name. The match is done with an SQL %LIKE% command from the spec to the template, so spec template "m0n0" will match with "m0n0" and "m0n0wall" in the Apps library. But spec template "m0n0wall" will not match with "m0n0" in the Apps library
Template auxiliary hard disks	Template system disks and other datastore hard disks and their tiers are saved	The platform will create template disks in order as in the template with no gaps in the sequence. Then empty additional hard drives and volumes will be added in the same order as in the base virtual appliance. The platform will search for datastore tiers by name, as for templates
Persistent VMs	Persistent VMs are not supported. To create a spec from a persistent VM, first create an instance, which is a non-persistent template
Private network, Private IPs	Save private network characteristics: network address and mask only. Save private IPs	The materialize process will present the addresses of the spec private networks. Abiquo will display matching networks in the virtual datacenter in green text, and ones that are not present in red text. Abiquo will display the number of private IPs to use in each network. The user can choose to change any private network, even if it matches the spec network. The user can choose to create a new network (specifying the IP address, mask and gateway), or replace the network with an existing VDC network.
Network gateways	Abiquo will determine if a NIC has a gateway IP address and save this information in the spec	If a NIC has a gateway IP address, when using an existing network, the materialize process will attempt to assign the network's gateway address to the NIC Abiquo will not assign the gateway IP address to a NIC that did not have this address in the original configuration If the materialize process is creating a new network, it will attempt to assign the same gateway address from the spec to the gateway NIC in the new network
Public network	Number of public IPs is saved	The materialize process will try to use public IPs that were already purchased by the enterprise. These public IPs will be momentarily quarantined during the materialization process. If not, the materialize process will purchase new public IPs. The public networks will be used in the order returned by the API. In public cloud, the platform will use floating IPs
External IPs	Not supported, except for basic support in vCloud	If you create a spec containing an external IP, the materialize process will fail because the external IP is unsupported. In vCloud, specs have basic support for external networks. The validation process will list the network, and you can select it and then continue with the process. The platform will create the VApp correctly. Remember to ensure that there are enough external IP addresses available for the new virtual appliance
Unmanaged IPs	Not supported	If you create a spec containing an unmanaged IP, the materialize process will fail because the unmanaged IP is unsupported.
Volume (data)	Data on external storage volumes is not included. To use data on a volume, create an instance to save it to a template disk	Empty volumes with the same specifications as the attached volumes are created. Empty volumes are named vappName-UUID
Volume (specifications)	The specifications, disk controller types, and tiers of the volumes are saved in private cloud	Empty volumes with the same specifications as the attached volumes are created. Empty volumes are named vappName-UUID Volumes are attached to the same disk controller type as in the original VM. If this controller type is not compatible with the target hypervisor, then the platform will use the hypervisor default Matches tier names as for VM templates. If no storage tier is found, then the validate will fail. If the storage tier does not contain pools, then the volume create will fail.
Hard disk (data)	Data on hard disks attached to the VM is not included. To use data on a hard disk, create an instance to save it to the template	Empty hard disks with the same specifications as the attached hard disks are created. Empty disks are named Empty disk-UUID
Hard disk (specifications)	The specifications, disk controller types and tiers of the hard disks are saved in private cloud	Empty hard disks with the same specifications as the attached hard disks are created. Empty disks are named Empty disk-UUID Hard disks are attached to the same disk controller type as in the original VM. If this controller type is not compatible with the target hypervisor, then the platform will use the hypervisor default Matches tier names as for VM templates. If no datastore tier is found, then the validate will fail. If the datastore tier does not contain datastores, then the deploy will fail.
Backup configuration	Configured backups are stored in private cloud	Backups are configured
Firewalls	Firewalls attached to VMs or load balancers are saved	Access to a firewall integration is required to create firewalls in the new virtual appliance Users can edit firewall rules during virtual appliance creation Users should be aware of compatibility issues between providers If a VM has no firewall in the spec, and the virtual datacenter has a default firewall, then the platform will assign the default firewall to the VM
Load balancers	Load balancers attached to VMs are saved, including health checks and so on	Access to a load balancer integration is required to create load balancers in the new virtual appliance Users should be aware of compatibility issues between providers
Monitoring (status)	Monitoring status of fetch metrics is saved The selected metrics are saved	Access to a monitoring server is required to retrieve metrics The materialize process creates built-in metrics of the exact same name ONLY and creates all custom metrics
Alarms and Alerts	Alarms and alerts are saved	The materialize process creates all existing alarms and alerts, regardless of the existence of their corresponding metrics
VM variables	VM variables are saved	The materialize process creates VMs with VM variables During the materialize process, users can edit the VM variables
Chef	Chef status, runlist and attributes are stored	The materialize process sets the status and recipes During the materialize process, users can edit the runlist and the attributes
VM bootstrap script	The VM startup script is saved	The startup script is added to the new VM at the end of the materialize process After the materialize process, the user can edit the VM to modify the startup script

Virtual appliance specifications (VApp specs) are saved configurations to help users easily create new virtual appliances.

To display Vapp specs

1. Go to Apps library → Virtual appliance specs

The platform will display all the specs available in the platform.

To display details of a VApp spec, hover over its icon.

To display the details of a VApp spec's Versions, click the options button on the icon and select Versions. The Manage spec versions dialog will open. Click on a Version to display its details.

Screenshot: Virtual appliance specs tab and Details panel

To share a VApp spec with multiple tenants, assign scopes to the spec. A scope is a list of enterprises whose users can access the spec.

1. When creating or editing a spec, open the Scopes tab
2. Select scopes to allow access to users of the enterprises included in the scopes

When you have finished working with the spec, click Accept

To define where a spec can be used, select allowed locations. Users of enterprises that are allowed to access a location can work with the specs allowed in the location.

To manage allowed locations:

1. Go to Apps library → Virtual appliance specs
2. Select the spec, click the Options button, and select Edit
3. Go to Locations → select locations
   1. If the spec should be available in all current and future locations, select Use all locations.
   2. To restrict the spec to a group of current locations:
      1. Clear the Use all locations checkbox
      2. Select the Locations where the spec will be available for use

When designing a virtual appliance for use in more than one location, please consider the following:

• Support for multiple disks in the provider
• Public networks in private cloud will be translated to floating IPs in public cloud and vice versa
• A range of IP addresses may be reserved by an SDN system or cloud provider
• The number of NICs allowed or required per VM may vary

The platform presents users with a single version of a virtual appliance spec. The administrator can configure this to be the default version or the latest version.

When you create a virtual appliance spec, the platform automatically sets this first version as the default version.

When you create another version you can choose to make this version the default.

To change the default version of a spec:

1. Go to Apps library → Virtual appliance specs
2. Select the VApp spec icon, click the options button, and select Versions
3. Click on the Version you want users to work with
4. On the top, right-hand side of the dialog, click Mark as default version

To unset the default, so that users will always work with the latest version:

1. Select the VApp spec version and click the pencil Edit button
2. Clear the Default checkbox

To delete a version of a spec, select it and click the Delete button. If you delete the default version, then the platform will return the latest version to users.

When workflow is enabled, the user's requests to deploy, reconfigure and undeploy VMs will be held with the status waiting to be reviewed. 

This can include actions on scaling groups, unless the administrator selects the option to disable workflow in the scaling group. 

To view the list of workflow tasks

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Workflow tasks.

To filter workflow tasks, enter text in the filter box at the top of the tasks list.

To cancel workflow tasks:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Workflow tasks
2. If you are an administrator, to refresh the list with all queued tasks for an enterprise, select a Cloud tenant from the Enterprises pull-down list
3. To cancel a queued task, click the Reject link next to the task.

Screenshot: A user can cancel their own tasks

Queued tasks are waiting for workflow control. If there is a problem with the workflow connector integration or tool, users with the privilege to Manage workflow tasks can manually continue the tasks.

To manually start a task and override the workflow control:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Workflow tasks. 
2. If you are an administrator, to refresh the list with all queued tasks for an enterprise, select a cloud tenant from the list of enterprises.
3. To start a task, click the Approve link beside the task

Screenshot: A user with the privilege to Manage workflow tasks can start their own tasks

To configure your VM backup by selecting the backup policy and the disks, do these steps:

1. Edit the virtual machine and go to Backup → Backup policies
   
   
2. Select from the list of Backup policies
3. Click Show details. Depending on your system configuration and user privileges, you may be required to configure different backup options. Examples of backup options
   
   

4. If required, enter backup frequency, or date and/or time

   Backup Times

   Abiquo uses ISO 8601 and you should check the time standard used in each datacenter with the datacenter owner

   Time zones in ISO 8601 are represented as local time (with the location unspecified), as UTC, or as an offset from UTC

5. If required, select disks
   
   • Note: Some backup systems will ignore your disk selection and create a backup of all disks. Check your cloud provider's documentation for more information

The administrator may allow users to restore their own backups.

To restore a VM backup:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Backups → Backup results
2. In the Latest backups section, in the Action column on the right, click the Restore link
   

To display the details of the restore, click on the backup in the Latest backups list. 

After the platform finishes the restore, it will display a status, such as "done" or "failed".

After you restore a backup, the VM disks are under the control of the backup system, not the platform. So when you undeploy after restoring a VM, the platform will display a warning popup and delete and remove the VM's disks.

If your environment permits, you may request more than one restore of the same backup. If the status of the restore request is "success" or "failed", Abiquo will reactivate the Restore link and you can click it to request a new restore of the same backup.

For users the backup feature will produce the events described on the Events table page in the Virtual machine section, under METADATA_MODIFIED and RESTORE_BACKUP.

To display VM backup events:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Backup → Events

This page will display events from backup integrations. 

To view the details of an event, click on the event.

An administrator can block actions on a VM in the platform by other users who do not have the Protect virtual machine privilege.

You can lock or protect a deployed VM when it is powered on, paused, or powered off.

To protect a VM

1. Select the VM and click the padlock protect VM button near the Deploy VM button
2. In the Protect virtual machine dialog, enter the reason for protecting the VM.

The platform will display a padlock symbol in the top left corner of the VM icon and change the status of the VM to MAINTENANCE. The administrator can customize this status in the UI labels. 

The name of the administrator who blocked the VM and the reason display in VM details → General.

To release a protected VM, click the padlock unprotect VM button

You can select the option to generate an initial guest password when you create a VM. Then when you deploy the VM, the platform will generate a random password and send it to you by email or SMS. After you deploy, you should log in as the root or administrator user and change the initial password.

The owner of the VM and administrators with the privilege to Display initial virtual machine password can also retrieve the guest password from the deployed VM.

To display the initial VM password:

1. Select the VM
2. On the control panel, click the key display initial guest password button

To reset the initial password of the root or Administrator user for a VM in vCloud Director :

1. Select a deployed VM
2. On the control panel, click the key display initial guest password button
   
3. On the popup that opens, click Reset password
   
   

The platform will automatically shut down the VM and run the process to reset the password, then it will restart the VM. The platform will send the new password by email or SMS as usual.

To open the Events view, click on the events icon on the main menu bar. 

To add new events as they arrive, select the Update automatically checkbox. Otherwise, you must refresh the list manually. 

To display the event details in the panel below the Event list, double-click on an Event. 

Some users may not be allowed to view events. If the events you expected to display do not appear in Events view, check with your system administrator.

An event in the platform has the following attributes:

To make it easier to find a specific event, use the filter tool.

1. Click the filter button  at the top right of Events view. 
2. Enter your filter criteria as described in the table below and click Accept. 

To remove the filter, click Clear at the bottom of the popup.

When events are filtered, the text  (events filtered)  will be displayed next to the filter button.

When you view the event detail, the platform will display the  Context  of the event. The context is an ID that the platform assigns to each event in a group of related events. For example, if you undeploy a virtual appliance, the platform will create events for the undeploy of each VM, the destruction of the related hard disks, and the release of the NICs. And the platform will assign the context ID to each of these events.

To display all the events related to an event, select the Event from the list, from the details view, copy the Context ID and filter by Context.

Events on the cloud platform are classified into three severity categories: info, warning and error.