Storage

The platform can manage  external storage systems  to offer self-service  persistent storage  to users. External storage can be used to allocate external storage volumes to VMs, or in private cloud to convert VM templates to persistent VM templates. Persistent templates save one or more VM disks to the storage platform, enabling you to take advantage of storage features such as high availability.

• In private cloud, external storage platforms can be integrated iSCSI systems (e.g. NetApp, Nexenta) or any NFS device. It is also possible to add generic iSCSI storage volumes that are managed outside of Abiquo or even to create your own storage integration using the storage SDK. 
• In public cloud, in Amazon the platform creates EBS disks and in Azure the platform creates Managed Disks.

In public cloud, the platform automatically manages storage tiers and users manage storage in the myCloud virtual datacenters section.

In private cloud, to manage a datacenter's external storage:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private 
2. In the datacenters list, select the datacenter to display datacenter details. 
3. Go to Storage. 

Here you can add storage devices and organize storage pools into tiers for storage service levels. See  Manage Storage and Storage Pool Allocation

Related pages:

• Manage volumes in private cloud Manage Persistent Storage and VMs
• Manage volumes in public cloud: Manage storage in public cloud
• Attach/detach volumes: VM storage 

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 display datastore tiers for hypervisor storage service levels:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter → Servers view → Datastore tiers

To manage the datastores of the hypervisor in tiers: 

 1. Go to Servers and edit the hypervisor

To display a list of enterprises with access to a datastore tier, edit the tier and go to Enterprise access.

When you deploy VMs, the platform will copy VM templates to the hypervisor datastore and you can also create hard disks and allow users to create hard disks on the hypervisor datastores.