How VM instances work

Owned by MS (Unlicensed)
May 03, 2022

Virtual Machine Instance Process

An Abiquo instance is a template that contains a copy of a VM’s disks

  1. In the deployed virtual appliance, the user powers off the VMs to instance
  2. The user clicks Create instance
  3. The user selects the disks to include in each new instance template
  4. Abiquo creates the templates and copies the selected disk files from the hypervisor to the Apps library
    • Abiquo will create conversions of the instances to all the appropriate formats
  5. The user can now power on their VMs again

More details about the instance process for an individual VM are shown in the following diagram. As you can see, the process varies slightly depending on the VM disk type.

 

Instance Formats

The system administrator can configure the format of Abiquo instances for each managed hypervisor type. There are two options: a configured format and instance operation result format.

  • Configured format
    • Default value
    • Administrator can set a format for the hypervisor type in the abiquo.properties file on the API server
    • Usually requires conversions but uses less disk space
  • Instance operation result format
    • In general, this will be the format of the original VM disk
    • On ESXi hypervisors, this is always the VMDK fixed format
    • Selecting this format means that users can always deploy the instance in the current VDC, so it may substantially reduce conversions
    • To use the instance operation result format for a hypervisor, set the format property to no value as described below

Abiquo Configuration Properties for Configuring Instance format

The properties to set the instance format are set to a configured format by default for the Abiquo API server profile. These properties are not case sensitive.

abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.vmx_04=vmdk_sparse
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.kvm=qcow2_sparse
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.hyperv_301=vhd_sparse
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.oracle_vm=raw
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.xenserver=vhd_sparse

Notes:

  • If you enter an invalid disk type, Abiquo will use the instance operation result format.
  • If you enter a valid disk type but it is not supported by the hypervisor, Abiquo will attempt to produce this conversion.
Valid disk types

You can enter any of the formats that Abiquo converts to or from. See the Template Compatibility Table for more information and unsupported hypervisor combinations. In general, the supported formats are:

  • RAW
  • VMDK_STREAM_OPTIMIZED
  • VMDK_FLAT
  • VMDK_SPARSE
  • VHD_FLAT
  • VHD_SPARSE
  • VDI_FLAT
  • VDI_SPARSE
  • QCOW2_FLAT
  • QCOW2_SPARSE

Abiquo retrieves these formats from the Abiquo API using a request to the DiskFormatTypesResource.

Use the instance operation result format

To use the instance operation result format, edit your abiquo.properties file, add the properties and set them to no value, as shown here.

  • Be careful not to add any spaces after the equals sign "=".
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.vmx_04=
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.kvm=
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.hyperv_301=
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.oracle_vm=
abiquo.instance.targetDiskFormatType.xenserver=

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