Public cloud storage

Abiquo 4.7 introduces public cloud storage for Amazon and Azure. In Amazon, the platform creates EBS volumes and in Azure it creates Managed Disks.

The platform automatically imports storage service levels from Amazon and Azure to create storage tiers. All storage tiers will always be available for use by all enterprises. The platform also detects existing volumes in the cloud provider.

For Amazon and Azure, users with the privilege to Manage virtual storage elements can create disks on the Volumes tab in the virtual datacenter.

When the platform imports volumes during the synchronization process, it will not associate them with a virtual datacenter. In order to work with these volumes, users must be able to access All virtual datacenters.

To display all volumes in all of your tenant’s VDCs in the platform, and all volumes outside of VDCs, select All virtual datacenters.

To display the volumes available in a region, select the region. To synchronize volumes at the regional level, click the double arrow button. The platform also synchronizes volumes when the user synchronizes a region or a VDC.

When users create volumes, it is helpful for them to know about the cloud provider’s storage offer. The minimum size for disks in Amazon and Azure is 1GB. The platform does not apply controller details, but in Abiquo 4.7.0 users can specify them.

When configuring a VM, a user can go to the Storage tab and drag and drop available volumes to attach them to the VM. This requires the standard user privileges to modify a VM only.

Users can later detach auxiliary disks or delete a VM, and during the synchronization process the platform will recognize the auxiliary disks as volumes in the virtual datacenter or region.

To move a detached volume to another virtual datacenter or to the region, users can go to Virtual datacenters → Volumes → All, then drag and drop the volume to the desired location.

Azure

After region or storage synchronization in Azure, volumes will be available to all virtual datacenters in the region.

In Azure, the feature to create an instance template to save a copy of VM disks has been disabled in Abiquo 4.7.0 pending further development.

Amazon

After storage synchronization volumes in AWS will be available in the same virtual datacenter.

Delete on termination disks

In Amazon, when you create an instance, you can select an EBS disk and configure it as Delete on Termination, which means that the provider will destroy the disk when you terminate the VM. If you onboard a VM with these disks into Abiquo, when you undeploy or delete the VM, the platform will destroy the disks. If you detach the disks from the deployed VM in Abiquo, the platform will synchronize them as volumes.

Instance templates

In AWS, users can create an instance template with a copy of the selected VM disks. As always, remember to power off the VM beforehand. 

When you create a VM from an instance template, the platform will display one disk only, with the total size of all disks. After you deploy the VM, the platform will update the additional disks.

Upgrade notes

In Abiquo 4.7 the Storage Manager (STORAGE_SYSTEM_MONITOR or SSM) remote service has been removed and the NARS remote service will now manage storage for the platform. Administrators can update existing public cloud templates to enable hot reconfigure of disks