Configure Virtual Machines

This page describes how to configure VMs in detail. Before you read this page, you may like to work through Manage Virtual Machines to help you get started working with VMs. After you add your VMs to a virtual appliance, you can configure the VMs before deployment or reconfigure after deployment. Each of these configuration topics is also available as a separate page.

Prepare to configure a VM

To prepare to configure a VM do these steps:

Privilege: Edit virtual appliance details

If your VM is deployed
1. If your VM supports hot-reconfigure (in private cloud on VMware hypervisors, in public cloud, see provider features tables), you may configure when powered on
2. If your VM does not support hot-reconfigure, select the VM and go to the stop button.
  1. If your guest supports graceful shutdown with guest tools, select the Shut down option
  2. Or connect to the VM and shut it down directly
  3. Or if your VM is prepared for a hard shutdown, select Power off
On the VM icon, select the options menu, and select Edit. Full configuration details are given below
After you make your changes click Save. The platform will reconfigure the VM.
Deploy or power on the VM as appropriate.

Infrastructure updates

The periodic infrastructure check will detect direct changes to the VMs (CPU, RAM and hard disk) and register these changes in platform statistics and accounting, as well as on the VM general configuration page.

General configuration

The DVD functionality has been replaced with the ISO functionality.

Field	Description
UUID	The Unique Identifier of the VM
Name	The Name of the VM. Defaults to the VM template name. If the provider does not support duplicate names, for example vCenter, Abiquo will add a number in parentheses after the name. For example, if you or another user already created two VMs from a template named TEMPLATE, then your next two VMs will be named TEMPLATE (2) and TEMPLATE (3). If the other user later deletes their second VM, your next VM may be TEMPLATE (1). The platform powers on VMs in ascending alphanumeric name order, so for example, 1_WebServer will power on before 2_Database. However, there is no guarantee that the VMs will finish starting up in the same order. If you try to rename the VM to a name that already exists in a provider that does not support duplicate names, then Abiquo will return the hypervisor error.
Fully qualified domain name	Optionally enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the VM. You can edit this value before you deploy the VM. If you don't enter a FQDN, the platform will automatically generate one. The hostname will be the VM name (format ABQ-uuid) or another Abiquo identifier (format ABQ-id). The domain will be the domain value of the private or external networks that the VM belongs to, or localdomain. After you deploy the VM, if you change the value in the operating system, then Abiquo will synchronize and obtain the new value.
Owner	The enterprise and user that owns the VM
Guest initial password	Generate an initial root or Administrator password for the VM and email it to the owner. You can change this value before you deploy the VM. See Guest setup
CPU	The number of CPUs. You may only change this value when the VM is undeployed or stopped or when using hot add/reconfigure. Requires the privilege to Edit VM details. The virtual datacenter and enterprise allocation limits will be checked when you enter this number. The number of CPUs available in the hypervisors will be checked when the VM is deployed or restarted. Read-only value when hardware profiles are used.
Cores per socket	The number of cores per socket. The number of CPUs must be divisible by the number of cores per socket. Not shown when hardware profiles are used.
RAM	The amount of RAM. Select MB or GB. You may only change this value when the VM is undeployed or stopped, or with hot add/reconfigure. Requires privilege Edit VM details privilege. The virtual datacenter and enterprise allocation limits will be checked when you enter this number. The number of CPUs available in the hypervisors will be checked when the VM is deployed or restarted. Read-only value when hardware profiles are used.
Enable Remote Access	Hypervisors with Remote Access Support only. Enable remote access on this VM. If the VM was created without remote access enabled on the hypervisor, it will be enabled. If you disable remote access, the configuration will remain but you cannot access it via the console icon.
Remote access	Remote Access to the VM by VNC may be Not Available, usually because the VM is not deployed. If it is available and you have the View datacenter details privilege, the Remote Access IP and Port may display.
Remote Access Password	To open the VNC remote access window to your VM from the console button on the control panel, you must enter this password. By default Abiquo will generate a random password for your VM. To change the password, enter a maximum of 8 characters that are alphanumeric characters only, i.e. [a..z][A..Z][0..9]. If you delete the password, the screen requesting the password will not appear. On ESXi hypervisors, if you set a password and later delete it, the password will be blank, not null. The screen requesting the password will appear, and you should press <Enter> to continue. If the VM is deployed when you change the password, the change will be applied when you save the VM. Limitation: On ESXi hypervisors you cannot change the password with hot-reconfigure; you must reboot to update the password for the VM
Show password	Optionally mark the checkbox to show the remote access password
SSH user / password	The default user and password from the VM template
VM Keymap	ESX/ESXi only - If Remote Access is Available, you can select the keyboard type for remote access through the eye button for ESXi hypervisors
Description	A description of the VM. The default value is copied from the VM template
Icon	Enter the URL for the template's icon. This must be an accessible URL with a public or routable IP address, not localhost or 127.0.0.1. It may contain the IP address of the API server. It should use the same protocol as the server to avoid mixed content errors. Square icon images with a size of 128x128 pixels and a transparent background look best. The compatible image formats are PNG, JPG, and GIF. This icon will have priority over the VM template's icon and the platform default icon.
Hardware profile	If your provider uses hardware profiles, select a hardware profile for the VM
Created	Date and time that the VM was created

Configure Network

If you deploy a VM without configuring a network interface, the platform will automatically assign an address in the default network.

Privilege: Edit virtual appliance details, Manage virtual network elements, Manage public IPs, Manage floating IPs, Attach NICs in restricted networks to VMs, Detach NICs in restricted networks from VMs, Assign public IPs to VMs, Assign external IPs to VMs, Manage global networks

Your administrator may create or obtain multiple IP addresses for your virtual datacenters under Virtual datacenters → Networks.

Create NICs and IP addresses

To create NICs and attach them to a VM:

Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances
If your VM is deployed and you are not using hot-reconfigure of NICs, shut down the VM
Edit the VM and go to Networks
Select a network type and a network. Network types include:
1. Private networks with private IP addresses that only allow your VMs to communicate with others inside the same virtual datacenter.
2. External networks that belong to an enterprise and allow VMs to communicate with machines outside their virtual datacenter
3. Public networks with Internet addressable public IP addresses that may be required to access your VM in public cloud
4. Subnets of global networks that are required to deploy in Google Cloud Platform and that enable you to access cloud services without general internet access
Depending on the network type, you may be able to:
- Request an automatically created NIC and IP by dragging and dropping "Automatically generated IP" to your VM. This IP address will be created and assigned at deploy time.
- Create a new IP address and NIC by clicking the + add button, which requires the Manage virtual network elements privilege
- Purchase a public IP address by clicking the Purchase public IPs button
- Create a new NIC by dragging an IP address into the IPs pane
For each VM your administrator may limit the total number of network interfaces and/or the number of network interfaces in the same network

Optionally set Default gateway

If you are not sure about the gateway, don't worry! If there is no default gateway selected, the platform uses the gateway address of the network of the first NIC on the VM.
If you change the NICs on the VM, check the gateway is still valid, because you won't be able to save your VM until the gateway is valid.

In the Default gateway box, optionally select an address to be the default gateway of the VM.

Edit VM network configuration

To reorder network interfaces in the VM in supported clouds:

Beside a network interface, click the pencil edit button
Enter the desired number in the sequence where you would like to move the interface
Click OK

To remove a NIC from a VM:

Check that its network does not have the default gateway address for the VM
Click the X beside the NIC

To change the default gateway:

Select a new gateway from the list.

To remove the current default gateway:

Select the gateway address
Click the X delete button beside the gateway address

For public cloud network configurations, please check for the following:

Automatic network configuration or network requirements, for example, a required public IP
Charges for public IPs that are not used by running VMs. When you remove an IP from a VM or undeploy the VM, if you no longer need the same IP address, remove it from your VDC and the platform.
Different public IP address when you remove a public IP and add another public IP to your virtual datacenter and VM
Limits for public IPs that are independent of any public IP limit in the platform
The platform does not support OCI Secondary private IP addresses, so it will not display them in the VM configuration. It will display them as unavailable on the Network configuration screens. See Display secondary IP addresses in OCI

Privilege: Manage floating IPs

A public IP that is not part of any network in the platform is called a floating IP.

To remove a public IP from your VM

Power off or undeploy the VM
Click the trash bin delete button near the IP address.

Configure Storage

In private cloud datacenters, VMs can have the following storage types, when supported in your environment:

Volumes of managed storage
Hard disks on the hypervisor datastore
ISO hard disks on datastore DVD drives

Display VM storage

Privilege: Edit virtual appliance details, Manage virtual storage elements, Manage virtual storage controller

To display VM storage, including the details of the primary disk and attached storage,

Go to Virtual datacenters → select VM
Go to the VM details panel → Storage

To display and configure VM storage:

Go to Virtual datacenters → select the VM
To configure storage, if you are not using hot-reconfigure of disks, power off the VM
Edit the VM
Go to Storage

Attach Volumes of Managed Storage

Storage volumes are persistent, which means they will still be available after you undeploy the VM.

To attach storage volumes to a VM

Go to Virtual datacenters → select VM
If you are not using hot reconfigure, power off the VM
Edit the VM and go to Storage
The platform displays the list of Volumes available to you in the virtual datacenter. To attach a volume to your VM, drag it from the Volumes pane to the main Storage pane.
To save all your changes to the VM, click Save. If the VM is deployed, it will be automatically reconfigured.

If a volume does not attach properly but you do not see an error message, a problem may have occurred in the storage device. Contact your System Administrator

Create Hard Disks on Hypervisor Datastores

In private cloud datacenters, you can create secondary hard disks that are not persistent. This means that when you undeploy the VM or remove the hard disk the platform will delete your hard disks and destroy all data on them.

Administrators can control the display of the Hard Disk Tab in Configuration View#General tab
The administrator can force the use of the same controller type and controller as for the primary template disk using the appropriate Abiquo Configuration property.

Privilege: Edit virtual appliance details, Manage virtual storage elements, Manage virtual machine hard disks, Manage allocation when attaching a disk, Manage virtual storage controller.

To save data before you undeploy, create a backup, or create an Abiquo instance template, or copy data to a persistent volume. See Manage VMs#SaveVMdiskstocreateaninstancetemplate and Manage Persistent Storage and VMs

To add a VM hard disk:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage
Click the add button at the top right of the tab
Select Assign virtual disk and complete the dialog
Click Save to create the disk, then finish editing the VM, then click Save

For more details see GUI Edit virtual machine Storage Assign virtual disk

Add an ISO Disk to Install Software

When you configure a VM, you can select an ISO disk from the catalogue to install software on your VM.

To add an ISO disk from the Apps library catalogue:

Privilege: Manage virtual machine ISO disks

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit a VM → Storage
Click the + add button
Choose Select an ISO disk
From the Apps library browser window that opens, select an ISO disk
Click Save

Abiquo will create a DVD hard disk on the hypervisor datastore to contain the ISO disk. You cannot resize an ISO hard disk.

Detach Volumes and Delete Hard Disks

When you detach a volume, it will be available in the virtual datacenter again. For ESXi, you can only detach an iSCSI external storage volume if the VM does not have VMware snapshots. If you cannot detach a volume as expected, please contact your System Administrator.

When you detach a hard disk, the platform will destroy it and all data on it.

To delete a hard disk or to detach a volume of virtual storage:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage
Select the hard disk or volume
Click the detach/delete button at the top right of the Storage tab
Confirm the delete or detach operation
Click Cancel to discard changes or Save to reconfigure the VM in the hypervisor

A volume that has been detached will now be available again in the virtual datacenter.

Click here to show/hide the screenshot

Change VM Storage Boot Order

Abiquo recommends that you change the boot order by itself, without making any other disk configuration changes at the same time. Disk hot-reconfigure on ESXi only supports changes to the boot order as part of disk add or disk remove operations. Other changes made in the platform will not be implemented until the VM is powered off and reconfigured. Note that the platform will ignore Cloud-init ISO disks in the boot order.

To change the boot order:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage
Click the pencil edit button beside the Boot order number
Enter the new number in the Boot order where you want the disk to go and click ok.
Repeat for other disks, as required
The platform will ensure that each disk has a unique number in the boot order and the boot order is contiguous (without gaps between disk numbers).
Click Save to reconfigure the VM with the new order

Click here to show/hide the screenshot

The platform will change the boot order.

Modify VM Volumes

After you add a volume of external storage to a VM, save the VM before you modify the volume.

To modify a VM volume:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage
Select the attached volume and click the pencil edit button
Modify the controller type and controller as required

Edit a VM volume in private cloud

Edit a VM volume in Azure

For more details see GUI Edit volume VM

To make other changes to a volume (e.g. resize), go to the Virtual datacenters view on the Volumes tab. See Manage Persistent Storage and VMs#Managepersistentvolumes

Modify VM Hard Disks

You can edit hard disks, for example, to change the name and resize them, including in an existing deployed VM on demand.

To edit a hard disk

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit virtual machine → Storage
Select the hard disk and click the pencil edit button

Edit a virtual disk in private cloud

Edit the system disk in AWS

For more details see GUI Edit virtual disk
Click Save on the Edit virtual disk size popup
Continue editing the VM or click Save to reconfigure the VM

Configure VM Backups

The platform uses backup systems, such as Veeam or Networker, and it creates backups for VMs that are deployed on the hypervisor.

When you configure a backup for your VM, the platform will display the disks backup symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the VM icon.

In some environments the backup system may support restore for VMs that were previously deployed and are now undeployed. If you delete the VM, you cannot access the backup system through the platform.

Create a manual backup now

To request a manual backup of a VM now:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Backup
At the bottom of the Backup tab, click the Backup now button

The platform will request an immediate backup of the VM or a VM snapshot

Configure a VM backup

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

Privilege: Manage virtual machine backup configuration, Manage virtual machine backup disks, Manage virtual machine backup schedule

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

Configure Bootstrap Scripts

Before you begin:

Create your VM with a template that is compatible with cloud-init version 0.7.9 or above, or cloudbase-init, or a similar system
In private cloud, the platform will create an ISO disk for Configuration drive

To add a VM bootstrap configuration or script in private or public cloud:

Go to create or edit VM → Bootstrap script
Paste your configuration or script in the Bootstrap script text box
Continue to configure the VM or click Save to finish

Notes about bootstrap in private cloud

If the user does not enter the FQDN on the General tab when editing the VM, the platform will try to set the FQDN using the name or ID attribute of the VM, and the domain of the VM's networks, or the localhost domain
If DHCP is not used in your datacenter, the network configuration of the VM can be read from cloud-init, so you do not need to configure the network or allow access to the VM
Abiquo uses the ConfigDrive DataSource for cloud-init. Reference: http://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/datasources/configdrive.html

Notes about startup scripts in AWS

In AWS you must always select a guest setup option
In AWS, for Windows, depending on the template and its guest setup option, the script format is:
1. cloudbase_init: cloud-init or shellscript
2. ec2launch and ec2config: you must have the following tags at the start and end of your script
  1. batch script, use <script></script>
  2. powershell script, use <powershell></powershell>
3. ec2launch v2: yaml format. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2-windows-user-data.html#user-data-yaml-scripts.
  If your script format is invalid, AWS will try ec2launch and ec2config format. See: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2-windows-user-data.html

Assign Firewalls

Abiquo supports firewall policies that are similar to security groups in private cloud with network managers, and in public cloud providers that support security groups, such as AWS and Azure.

If your provider offers firewall policies, first create them in your virtual datacenters, then assign firewall policies to your VMs.

Privilege: Assign firewall

To assign a firewall from the virtual datacenter to a VM:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Firewalls
Mark the required firewall policy with a tick in the Firewall policies checklist
Click Save or continue editing the VM as required

Troubleshooting:

If you cannot assign more firewall policies, check your cloud provider's limit. For example, for AWS, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_SecurityGroups.html#VPCSecurityGroups
If your provider's default firewall policy does not display, you may need to synchronize your virtual datacenter or firewall policies before you continue
If an expected firewall policy does not display, for example, a firewall policy that you recently created, you may need to wait for the firewall policy to propagate through the provider's API because of eventual consistency
You can remove the default firewall when editing a VM. However, if the provider requires a firewall and you do not supply another one, the platform will assign the default firewall again.

Configure Chef

Chef is an infrastructure automation product that uses configuration recipes. You can use Abiquo Chef Integration to deploy a VM that will then configure itself using Chef recipes and roles. In datacenters, the Abiquo Chef integration works with Cloud-init or Cloud-base-init, so you will need compatible templates and you will need to select this guest setup option.

Configure Chef Recipes and Roles

The Chef tab is enabled if the enterprise is Chef-enabled and the VM template is marked for Cloud-init support.

Before you deploy the VM, you can select from the available roles and recipes. By default, you can select roles. Mark the "Select individual components" checkbox to select individual recipes too. The platform will add your selection to the Virtual Appliance's runlist in order of selection. When you deploy the VM, it will download the roles and recipes, and run them in order.

To change the order of the runlist, click on the pencil Edit button beside a role or recipe, then enter the new order number, then click ok.

If you change the runlist after deploy, Abiquo will update the Chef server, and your Chef-client recipe can obtain these changes from the Chef server.

Configure Chef Attributes

The platform passes Chef attributes to Chef for your recipes. You can find lists of attributes in the Chef recipe configuration files. See https://docs.chef.io/nodes.html

Edit the VM and go to Chef → Attributes
Enter the attributes, which are the parameters for each recipe, in JSON format.
- The Chef attributes must be enclosed in "{ }". You must enter a valid JSON document and Abiquo will validate it
- Abiquo does not validate the attributes, so check them carefully
Click Save, which will save the entire VM configuration

Assign Load Balancers

Privilege: Assign load balancers

To assign a virtual machine to a load balancer, select the load balancer from the list.

Configure Metrics

The platform may automatically enable metrics for all VMs. If you have the privilege to Manage virtual machine monitoring and it is configured in your virtual datacenter, you can enable the option to fetch built-in metrics from the hypervisor or public cloud region, as well as any custom metrics defined for your VM.

Enable Monitoring and Metrics

To enable VM monitoring and metrics:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Monitoring
Select the Fetch metrics data checkbox. This will retrieve all metrics while the VM is deployed
Select from the available options, for example, for AWS offers Detailed or Basic monitoring.
Select the individual metrics you would like to display for your VM. The functionality and list of available metrics depend on the underlying virtualization technology and the platform configuration.

The platform will always retrieve all metrics, so you can change the metrics to display at any time. And you can use any metric for alarms and alerts, even if you do not display it. You may need to wait a short time for the first metrics to load.

Click here to show/hide the screenshot of VM monitoring

Screenshot: VM monitoring on Google Cloud Platfrom

Display Metrics for a VM

To display and filter metrics for a VM:

Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliance → VM icon → click the graph metrics symbol
The metrics panel will open and you can dynamically filter and select which metrics to display.

To update the display of a metric, click the round-arrow refresh button.

To configure the display of the metric:

Select the funnel filter button
Set the following as required
1. Granularity, which is how often the metric is sampled
2. Statistic, which determines how the raw values will be processed over time
3. "Last" period, which is how long the display will look behind at the processed data
4. Metric dimensions: for metrics with more than one possible element being monitored, for example, multiple hard disks, you can display metric dimensions, which are metrics for separate elements.
  1. To view metric dimensions, click Get dimensions. Select a dimension.
  2. If no dimension is selected, the default value is the average of all dimensions
Click Accept to save the values.

To view the exact metric values in a call-out box, mouse over the metric graph line.

To create a highlight point, click on the metric graph line.

To simultaneously view the data for more than one VM, use the virtual appliance Monitoring view.

Configure Variables

Add VM variables

Before you deploy a VM, you can set guest variables to pass user data to your VM. This functionality uses cloud-init and requires appropriate templates. In private cloud, the templates must have the guest setup flag set to cloud init. The administrator can add default variables for the VM template.

This functionality is available through the API. The platform stores variables in the VirtualMachine "variables" attribute, which is a dictionary of keys and values. See Update a virtual machine in VirtualMachinesResource

You can modify VM variables before you deploy the VM

To add VM variables:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit a VM that is not deployed → Variables
Enter each Key and Value
1. The length of these can be up to 255 characters each
Click Add
To delete a variable click the trash can symbol beside the Key. To edit the Value of a variable, click the pencil edit button beside the Value
To apply changes to variables, and other changes to the VM, click Save

Read Guest Variables

The variable location will depend on the method of guest setup that you are using for your VM. Here are some general guidelines.

Cloud	Method	Variable location
Private	Cloud-init	The variables are stored on the cloud-init ISO, which has the label "config-2". The variables file is "openstack/latest/vm-variables.rc"
Private	Hypervisor tools	On ESXi, run the following command in the guest to get the value of a variable: vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.abiquo.<variable-name>"
Private	Hypervisor tools	For vCloud Director, hypervisor tools does not support variables
Public	Cloud-init	The variables are stored in the /opt/abiquo-env.rc file
Amazon	Cloudbase-init ec2launchv2 ec2lanch ec2config	On Windows, the variables are stored in the C:\ProgramData\Abiquo\abiquo-env.rc file
Azure	Cloud-init	On Windows, according to the Azure documentation on custom data Custom data is placed in %SYSTEMDRIVE%\AzureData\CustomData.bin as a binary file, but it is not processed. If you wish to process this file, you will need to build a custom image, and write code to process the CustomData.bin.. On Linux, you can use cloud-init to read the variables from custom data.

Display VM Events

To display VM events:

Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances
Edit a VM
Go to Events

To display the detail of an event, click on the event.

To sort events by a column, click on the column header.

Related pages

Definition of Abiquo concepts in myCloud View
Introduction to working with VMs in Manage Virtual Machines