Appliance Library View

Introduction to the Apps library

The Appliance Library (Apps library) enables cloud providers to offer users a catalog of VM templates for self-service deployment.

To access the Apps library, click the disk stack Apps Library button on the main menu.

Privilege: Access Appliance Library view

For each datacenter or public cloud region, the platform displays the VM templates available to your enterprise.

Manage the Apps library using the API

API Feature

This feature is available in the API. For datacenters, see DatacenterRepositoriesResource.
For datacenters and public cloud regions, see TemplateDefinitionsResource and TemplateDefinitionListsResource

Apps library concepts

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Apps library symbols

The template icons in the Apps library are marked with the following symbols.

Template type	Symbol	Description
Shared template		This template may be used by all enterprises listed in the template's scopes.
Main template		In private cloud, this template has secondary templates or instance templates. Click on the template to display the instance template panel.
Secondary template		In private cloud, this template is a secondary template (or instance template). It is a copy of the selected disks of a VM created from the main template. You can create instances from VMs in the Virtual appliances view.
Deleted template		Also called an Unavailable template. In private cloud, this template has one or more disks missing in the Apps library filesystem. In public cloud, the template is no longer available
Failed template		In private cloud, this template has a disk file that was not properly created.

For information about creating instance templates, see Manage VMs#SaveVMdiskstocreateaninstancetemplate
For information about managing instances, see Manage Instances in Datacenters

VM template states

The platform derives template states from the states of the disks in the template. If any of the disks is in an error state, the template will also be in an error state. You can delete individual disks that are in an error state, but a template must always have one disk, even if it is in an error state.

Template disks can be in the following states.

IN PROGRESS: The platform has registered the template and is uploading or downloading a disk file to the Apps library
DONE: The template is complete, although conversions to other hypervisors may not be present yet
FAILED: the disk was not properly created because of an issue during its creation
UNAVAILABLE: the disk is defined in the template but not present in the Apps library.
- The platform will not allow an administrator to delete a template when it is used in VMs or has dependent instance templates. Instead, the platform will delete the template disk files to prevent further deploys.
- If an administrator replaces the disk file, then the platform makes the template available again.

The priority of the disk state in determining the template state is as follows: 1. In progress, 2.Failed, 3. Unavailable, 4. Done. For example, if a template has any failed disks, the template will also be in the failed state, even if any of its other disks are unavailable or done.

Disk conversion states

In private cloud, the platform will automatically convert VM template disks to enable users to work with them on all available hypervisors. The state of a disk conversion does not affect the state of the template.

The possible states of conversions are:

- ENQUEUED
- FINISHED
- FAILED

To display the conversions of a template disk, edit the template, go to the Disks tab and select the disk.

Pages related to Apps library

For a basic introduction to adding VM templates, see: Add Virtual Machine Templates to Abiquo
For full details of adding VM templates, see: Add VM Templates to the Apps Library
VM automation with cloud-init templates: Guest setup
Configuration pages
- VM repository folder
- In Modify a VM template, see Extended OVF Support and Template Definition and OVF Reference.