Compute in Datacenters

In private cloud, the platform enables you to organize your compute resources (such as hypervisors and container servers) on virtual racks in datacenters. The compute resources are referred to as physical machines. This section describes how to manage racks and machines in private cloud datacenters.

Before you add your hypervisors to the platform, we recommend that you do the following steps.

1. Check that the installation and configuration of your hypervisors follows Abiquo instructions in the corresponding Private cloud providers documentation.
2. Optionally enter the default hypervisor connection details at Configuration → Infrastructure: Default hypervisor user, password, port
3. Optionally enter the default VLAN tag range for racks at Configuration → Infrastructure: Default minimum and maximum VLAN ID
4. Optionally enter the default private network details at Configuration → Network: Name, netmask, network address, gateway, and DNS settings
5. For hypervisor storage service levels, create datastore tiers. See Manage Datastore Service Levels with Datastore Tiers
   1. When you create the tier, set the Storage allocation policy for the datastore allocation process. 
   2. You can set Allocation rules to define the percentage of each datastore that will be available for the platform to use at a datacenter or datastore tier level before you add datastores. See Allocation Rules#Storageloadlevelrules. Create specific Datastore rules after you add the datastore.
6. Create network service types to tag your hypervisor network interfaces. See Manage Network Service Types 

To create a rack:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
2. At the bottom of the Physical servers list, click the + add button and select Rack
   
3. Enter the Name and optional values
   
4. Go to Network
   1. For Network ID min and Network ID max, enter the range of the VLAN or VXLAN tags to use on this rack for private networks
   2. In Excluded VLAN IDs, enter a comma-separated list of ranges (with a dash "-") and/or individual tags that you will use for other networks.
   3. In Reserved VLANs per VDC enter the number of VLANs that you expect VDCs to use. Note that this is not a real reservation, but it will prevent the creation of too many VDCs on the rack!
   4. In VLAN pool size enter the number of VLANs to reserve for VDCs that use more than the expected number
   
5. Click Save

Related pages:

• UI reference: GUI Create rack General information and GUI Create rack Network 
• Tune VLAN parameters for racks

To add a host (also called a server or physical machine)

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Servers
2. If there are no racks, first create a rack. See Create racks
3. Select a rack, then click the + add button. Select Physical machine
   
   
   
4. Select the Hypervisor type, which could be a standard hypervisor, master hypervisor such as vCenter, or VMware vCenter cluster as a physical machine
   • Remember when you are configuring test environments that you cannot add a vCenter more than once, for example, as a master hypervisor and as a cluster!  
5. Enter the connection details. You can enter the IP address or the FQDN of the server
   
   Using the connection details, the Discovery Manager remote services will try to retrieve the hypervisors or clusters from a master hypervisor or connect with the hypervisor or cluster.
   
   
6. For a master hypervisor, the multiple hypervisor selection dialog will open with a list of the physical machines managed by the master hypervisor. Select the ones that you wish to add and click Edit to complete their details as required. 
   
7. After the platform retrieves each host (server or "physical machine"), the Create physical machine dialog will open.

Register a physical machine in Abiquo

To register a physical machine in Abiquo, do these steps.

1. Enter the Name, which defaults to its IP address, and check the other details
   
2. Go to Network interfaces and enable at least one network interface. To do this, select the network service type of the VLANs that will use this interface
   
3. Go to Datastores and and enable at least one datastore. 

   • For vCenter clusters, use shared datastores, and if you require local datastores, add them to single-host tiers

     • When you use a shared datastore, the platform creates a different datastore on each physical machine using the datastore. This means that a shared datastore can be enabled on one host and disabled on another, either as a result of user configuration or an issue (e.g. an NFS communication error on one host).
   • Do not enable the NFS repository (usually /opt/vm_repository) because this will severely degrade deployment performance
      
4. Click Save

Related pages:

• UI Reference:
  • GUI Create physical machine General information
  • GUI Create physical machine Network interfaces
  • GUI Create physical machine IPMI. Deprecated
  • GUI Create physical machine Datastores

Machines can be reserved for a specific enterprise and the enterprise's deployments can also be restricted to these reserved machines. To do this, go to Users View and edit the Enterprise tenant on the the Reservations tab.

You can also prevent enterprises from sharing servers. For more details, see Allocation Rules.

To display racks and cloud hosts:

1. Go to to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Servers.
   The Physical servers list displays racks and physical machines.

To go directly to a virtual datacenter, virtual appliance, or a VM:

1. Click on the link to the entity in the VMs grid

To filter physical machines by rack:

1. Enter text in the search box at the top of the physical servers list to filter racks and press Enter.
   The platform will only display the racks with names containing this text

To display a summary of the properties of a physical machine below the VMs pane:

1. Select the physical machine. 

To put a physical machine in maintenance mode:

1. Use vMotion to move VMs
2. Click the Stop slider button (users cannot deploy, reconfigure, undeploy)
   
3. Put the hypervisor host in maintenance mode or shut it down

To display the details of a host on the following panels, select the host in the Infrastructure view. 

• General: provides information about CPU, RAM, Hard disk, IP address, Hypervisor type and Port for the hypervisor connection, and the Description.
  
• Network interfaces: displays a list of interfaces and the service type tags that are assigned to them. Service type tags are also assigned to VLANs. 
  

• State: contains the used resources (CPU, RAM, Hard Disk) in the physical infrastructure, which are updated every time a user deploys or undeploys a virtual appliance or during each infrastructure check of the physical machine. The infrastructure check runs as an automatic periodic check or you can force a check when you edit the physical machine by clicking the State Check button.
  

To view the VMs created on a physical machine, go to Infrastructure → Private → Physical servers → select rack → select server.  

To go to the VM, or the virtual appliance or virtual datacenter that contains the VM, click on the active name link in the list. 

To display the details of a VM and the available controls, select it in the list.

If a VM is retrieved by the platform but not managed by it (marked with an  symbol), then you can capture it.

If a VM is managed by the platform (created in the platform or captured), then you can perform the standard VM actions, as appropriate and/or supported by the provider. You can also release a captured VM, although this functionality is designed to "undo" an incorrect capture, not for platform offboarding.

To send email notifications about a physical machine in private cloud or about VMs in private or public cloud:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → Servers OR
   Infrastructure → Public → Public cloud region → Virtual machines
   
   
2. Select a managed server or VM and click the email icon 
3. Optional: To add the email from your user account as the Sender address, select the checkbox. 

• For a VM, the platform can send a notification to the owner of the VM
  
• For a physical machine, select checkboxes to send notifications to:
  • All administrators of enterprises using this physical machine. 
    • Administrators have the "Define Enterprise Manager" privilege.
  • All users who have VMs deployed on that machine.

To make changes to a physical machine:

1. Go to Infrastructure → select a datacenter → Servers view
2. In the Servers list, open a rack and select a server, then click the pencil Edit button
3. Click Check to update the state of the server in the platform
4. Make your changes and click Save

Change network interfaces on servers

• Abiquo won't discover the new NIC's of a physical machine automatically on its periodic checks. In order to detect new network interfaces you should force the NIC refresh on the hosts via an API call.

• You cannot change the network service type assigned to an interface if there are VMs deployed with virtual NICs using addresses in the network. 
• To change a network service type, first remove it from the existing interface by setting this to "Not assigned". Then assign the network service type to a different interface. 
• To disable a NIC so that it cannot be used in the platform, select "Not assigned".
• To save the physical machine, you must select at least one network interface.

Add an additional datastore

If you require more disk capacity on a hypervisor, you can add a new datastore:

1. Outside the platform, on the server and in the hypervisor, configure the disk
2. Edit the server 
3. Go to General Information and click "Check" to check the state of the machine
4. Go to Datastores. You should see the new datastore; if not, go to Datastores and click the Refresh button in the top right-hand corner 
5. Optionally edit the datastore
6. Beside the datastore, click Enabled. You must enable at least one datastore. Do not enable the NFS repository (usually /opt/vm_repository)
7. Click Save

To edit a rack:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter → Servers view
2. In the Servers list, select the rack and click the pencil Edit button 

• • You can change the same rack values that are used when you create a rack. 
  • You cannot modify the network parameters of a rack to exclude a VLAN ID from the range or as a specific exclusion if there are any VMs deployed in a network using that VLAN tag ID.

Notes about deleting servers:

• You cannot delete a physical machine if it contains protected VMs. See Protect a VM. 
• If you delete a machine, the allocation rules directly referring to this machine will be deleted and the VMs deployed on it by the platform will be marked as "not allocated" in the platform.  
  • If you add the same machine again, then the VMs will be registered and marked as managed by the platform and their state will be updated to reflect any changes in the hypervisor.
  • You cannot redeploy captured VMs in the "not allocated" state unless you recreate them from an instance template.
• If you add the physical machine again, the platform will update all the VMs from the hypervisor, including captured VMs

To delete a rack:

1. Select the rack in the Servers list
2. Click the trash bin Delete button at the bottom of the Servers list

You cannot delete a rack with VMs deployed on its machines.