Introduction to import and capture VMs

In a private cloud datacenter, when you a hypervisor or cluster to Abiquo, it may already have VMs running on it, and you can import (retrieve) and capture these VMs.

When you import (also called "retrieve") VMs, they are registered in Abiquo but not managed by Abiquo. The platform will take into account the resources they use when scheduling and allocating resources, and track their state as part of the virtual infrastructure check. The platform will also include them to improve the accuracy of resource usage statistics.

You can then capture (also called "onboard") imported VMs so they will be managed by the platform. When you capture a VM it is almost identical to a VM created in Abiquo. The main difference is that when you capture a VM, Abiquo does not have a copy of the template disks in the Apps library. This means that you cannot automatically create a fresh copy of the VM with the same configuration and the template disks, by undeploying the VM and deploying it again to copy the template from the Apps library. When you capture a VM, to store the disks in the Apps library, you can create an Abiquo instance template, which you can then use to create a fresh copy of the VM.

Importing, capturing, releasing and removing VMs from the platform does not change them in the infrastructure; these operations only determine which operations the platform can perform on them.

This diagram shows steps to import and capture VMs that were created outside of Abiquo.

Import and capture of individual VMs is only available in private cloud. To capture resources from public cloud regions, onboard them as part of regions or virtual datacenters. See Manage Virtual Datacenters#Onboardfrompubliccloud

What does Abiquo import?

To import VMs (also called retrieve VMs), the physical machine must be in an Abiquo private cloud datacenter, or in the process of being added to one. You do not need to enable a datastore to import VMs that are running on the datastore.

• You can import VMs with disks that are located on external volumes with the configuration described below

What does Abiquo capture?

Abiquo captures the following VM configuration:

• CPU and RAM including hardware profiles
• Remote access configuration for VNC, including the password. But if there is no password, the platform disables remote access
  
  • If a user later releases a VM, the changes made in the platform will remain in the VM
• MAC addresses of compatible NICs and their VLAN tags and network details. Abiquo recommends that your VMs should have at least one NIC
  • Exception: Abiquo does not capture NICs on IPv6 networks
  • You can configure Abiquo to capture the DHCP configuration, see Abiquo Configuration Properties#capturedhcp
• Hard disks in compatible formats on the hypervisor datastores. See Template Compatibility Table
  • For ESXI, the platform will capture DVDs without a defined position in the boot order as ISO disks in the last position in the VM's boot sequence

When you capture a VM from NSX-T, you must add the VM to a VDC with the same network as the VM network. The platform will match the network by provider ID, not by VLAN tag as in the NSX-V integration.

During capture the platform will skip incompatible VMs and incompatible virtual hardware components.

• The platform does not add the virtual datacenter's default firewall policy to a VM as part of the capture process
• You can capture VMs with disks that are located on external storage volumes with the configuration described below
  • The platform does not capture VMs with external storage volumes in position 0 in the disk sequence. The boot disk must always be a "hard disk" on the hypervisor datastore

Configure Abiquo to Import and Capture VMs with Volumes

• For ESXi, to import VMs with disks that are located on external volumes, set the "abiquo.experimental.capturewithvolumes.bypass" property on the Abiquo Server
• For ESXi, to capture VMs with volumes (except in position 0 in the disk sequence), set the "abiquo.experimental.capturewithvolumes.bypass" property on the Abiquo Server
  • The platform can capture the VMs but it does not register the external storage volumes as VM resources
  • After you capture the VMs, you can add the volumes to the platform as Generic iSCSI volumes
  • If you do not add the volumes as Generic iSCSI volumes and you wish to add more external volumes, in order to prevent issues with the unregistered volumes, add volumes to a new SCSI controller of a different type