How Abiquo Storage Works

Abiquo storage options

Abiquo offers users several virtual storage options for saving your VM data:

Managed/Integrated iSCSI or NFS storage and public cloud storage, for offering Storage as a Service (SaaS)
Generic iSCSI storage
Hard disks on the hypervisor datastore

The first two of these options are persistent storage. The third option is non-persistent storage.

Abiquo Virtual Storage

Abiquo offers two main types of self-service virtual storage: hard disks and volumes.

A user creates hard disks directly for a VM and Abiquo creates them on the hypervisor datastore and deletes them when the user undeploys a VM or detaches a hard disk.
A user creates persistent volumes for a virtual datacenter and Abiquo creates them on an external storage device or in public cloud storage. The user attaches the volumes to the VM and when the user undeploys the VM, Abiquo detaches them and makes them available in the virtual datacenter. Users can move volumes from one VM to another. In private cloud, to create persistent VMs, users can copy templates to volumes and deploy them, or add persistent volumes to existing VMs.

Abiquo Persistent Virtual Storage

The following diagram explains how Abiquo users can work with persistent virtual storage in private cloud.

The Abiquo Storage Model

The Abiquo Storage Model consists of the following elements:

Apps library
Hypervisor datastores
External storage devices and public cloud storage

Apps Library

The Applications or Appliance Library is contained on the NFS/CIFS Repository in private cloud. Install one NFS/CIFS Repository per Abiquo datacenter (physical datacenter).

The Apps Library contains:

VM templates that users will deploy in the cloud, which include:
- VM template conversions generated by Abiquo for all hypervisor types
- VM instances, which are snapshot copies of disks of VMs running in the cloud

Hypervisor Datastores

A Hypervisor Datastore is mounted on the hypervisor and registered in Abiquo, usually in a service level called a datastore tier. When users deploy VMs in Abiquo, the virtual disk image is copied from the Apps library to the hypervisor datastore. For this reason, Abiquo recommends separating the Apps Library and the hypervisor datastores.

A hypervisor datastore contains:

Non-persistent VM system disks
Auxiliary hard disks

External Storage Devices

Abiquo volumes are virtual block devices that can be mounted on VMs. You can attach volumes through the Abiquo UI and the API. And then you can configure a volume as a physical disk in a VM.

Virtual storage types in private cloud:

Managed Storage or Integrated Storage, for providing users with Storage as a Service
- iSCSI
- NFS
Generic iSCSI Storage, for providing users with preconfigured volumes

External storage can contain the following virtual storage types:

Persistent virtual storage volumes of user data
Persistent VMs in private cloud

In public cloud users can attach VM volumes according to the provider technology, for example, EBS disks in AWS and Managed Disks in Azure. For VM system disks in public cloud, the platform support hard disks only.

Storage Model Diagram

The following diagram gives an overview of the Abiquo Storage Model.

Apps Library

The Apps Library (Applications or Appliance Library) enables users to manage virtual machine templates and template conversions, and virtual machine instances.

The Appliance Library is a repository where users can store the VM templates they want to deploy in the cloud. Each enterprise has its own private Appliance Library for each datacenter.

You can download VM templates from public repositories such as the default template repository provided by Abiquo. Or you can upload and download VM templates created in your own virtualized environments to and from the platform.

The Appliance Library is stored on the NFS Repository, which is an NFS Server in your datacenter. The Appliance Library folder is mounted by the Abiquo platform (Remote Services) and all the cloud nodes in your datacenter. When you deploy a virtual appliance, the Abiquo platform notifies one of the cloud nodes where the VM templates are stored (the Appliance Library), and the cloud node then copies the VM templates to the hypervisor. When you want to save the changes to your VM, you can create a VM instance, which means that the platform will copy the VM templates with changes back to the Appliance library a VM instance template.

Apps Library Contents

The Appliance Library contains VM templates of the following types:

VM templates containing VM disks and definitions downloaded or uploaded by the user
VM instances, which are copies of the disks of VMs running in the cloud, linked to the original VM template definition
Imported VM instances, which are copies of the disks of imported VMs

VM template folders contain:

VM templates that users wish to deploy in the cloud
VM template conversions generated by Abiquo for all hypervisor types

Apps Library Organization

The Appliance Library has categories to enable you to classify VM templates and avoid virtual image sprawl. A template can belong to a category, such as Operating Systems, Firewalls, Application Servers, etc. It is possible to create your own categories and these will be separate from the categories of other organizations using the platform in a shared environment.