Infrastructure

This page is part of the Abiquo walkthrough.
It walks you through basic private cloud infrastructure with tasks for incorporating your compute, storage, and network resources into the Abiquo platform.
It also describes how to create allocation rules to control the use of resources.
The previous page is: Abiquo walkthrough and the next page is: Virtual datacenters

In the Infrastructure view, on the Private tab, you can incorporate your datacenter's compute, storage, and network resources into the Abiquo platform.
You can also create allocation rules to control the use of these resources.

Private cloud servers in the Infrastructure view

Private cloud

Compute

In Abiquo datacenters, compute resources are servers that can run one of the supported hypervisors or container servers.
The Cloud Admin adds compute resources to logical groups on Abiquo racks with similar hypervisors or hardware.
For a standard networking configuration, you would usually align the Abiquo rack to the top of rack network switch.
The Abiquo rack is also the level where you enable High Availability, so you can align VMWare clusters with Abiquo racks.

Abiquo is a thin, unintrusive management layer to the existing infrastructure and there is no impact on any VMs that are already running.
The Cloud Admins can add the physical and virtual infrastructure to Abiquo in a controlled way on their own timescales.
Cloud Admins can easily add hypervisors to Abiquo by entering the IP address of the hypervisor managers or the hypervisors.

To create a rack:

Open the Infrastructure view and select Private and the datacenter name.
If you are not on the Infrastructure details tab (with Servers, Network, etc.), open it by clicking the server button in the top right corner of the screen.
At the top of the DATACENTERS list, click the plus button
Enter details of the Rack

Create a rack and enter the name and descrpition of the rack
Click Network and enter details for your switch and environment.
The platform will use these settings to create a pool of VLAN tags to assign to private networks
Click Save

When you add hypervisor datastores to Abiquo, you can present them to the Cloud users in datastore tiers.
Tiers enable you to provide multiple storage types with different performance, features and price points.
They also enable cloud users to select the tier that is suitable for their requirements or their price point.

To create datastore tiers

In the Infrastructure view, click the Datastore tiers tab, and click + add to create a datastore tiers
On the Enterprise access tab, allow all enterprises to access the tier.

Through the hypervisor, Abiquo will retrieve information about the physical machine and add the CPU and memory resources to the resource pool.
As part of the physical machine configuration for standard networks, the Cloud Admin will select a virtual switch.
Abiquo will use the virtual switch to configure virtual networks, and the datastore/s that Abiquo can use when deploying new VMs.

Task: Add a physical machine

Use the + button to create a new physical machine. For example, for vCenter.

Select the hosts to add to Abiquo and configure them as described here.
1. For each hypervisor host, you must enable a network interface (by assigning a Network Service Type).
  This is the network interface that is listening on VLANs.
2. For each hypervisor host, you must enable at least one datastore (mark the checkbox).
  Do not enable the vm_repository for use as a datastore.
Repeat the process of adding the physical machine for additional hypervisor hosts. Add the datastores to a datastore tier.

The platform can import VMs that were deployed before the machine was added to Abiquo.
You can capture these VMs and manage them with Abiquo.

Once a physical machine is discovered by Abiquo, customers can scan the host for existing VMs.
The existing VMs that are not managed by Abiquo will be highlighted.
Customers will have the opportunity to capture the existing VMs and bring them under Abiquo management.
This functionality allows customers to phase in the deployment of Abiquo

Create virtual datacenters for the host hypervisor type and appropriate networks for the VMs
In Infrastructure view, select the host and press the button to scan for VMs
Select a VM that is not managed by Abiquo
Click the Capture VM button.

See: Import and Capture VMs for more information.
Some VMs will be prefixed with ABQ and managed by Abiquo, and some will be already running and not managed by Abiquo.

Network

In private cloud, there are two main options for Abiquo networking: SDN integrations and standard networking.
Abiquo integrates with the VMware NSX system for software defined networking to manage private networks, firewalls and load balancers in Abiquo virtual datacenters.
With standard networking Abiquo will manage the virtual networks that are provisioned with VMs.
It does not integrate with network devices (e.g. switches), so the Network Admin will need to configure the switches and routers and provide a pool of VLANs that Abiquo can manage.
In datacenters, Abiquo manages virtual networks of 3 distinct types: private networks, external networks, and public networks.

Private networks

Private networks only exist within the Abiquo cloud environment.
As such Abiquo can completely manage these networks and users can be allowed to create their own private networks on a self-service basis.

In standard networking, the Abiquo rack configuration defines an available pool of VLANs and Abiquo will automatically assign an unused VLAN to a new private network.
Private networks enable VMs in the same virtual datacenter to communicate with each other.
When you use SDN integrations, Abiquo creates the private networks in the domain of the SDN system as specified by the Admin and using the SDN technology, such as VXLANs with VMware NSX.
The Admin can also assign an IP on the external network as a gateway IP for the private networks, enabling external connectivity for the VDC.
In public cloud regions that support networking, users can create private networks and work with features such as Availability Zones and NAT.

External networks

In Abiquo datacenters, External networks allow communication with the external infrastructure.
So the Cloud Admin must define IP ranges and VLANs that align with the switches and routers beyond the cloud environment.

The Cloud Admin assigns an external network (VLAN) to an Abiquo enterprise (cloud tenant).
For example, for service providers, you can assign each customer a dedicated VLAN and provide seamless connectivity to the cloud through existing MPLS or VPN connections.
And for enterprise customers, your departments (Abiquo enterprises) can connect to the corporate LAN.
For a tenant and/or virtual datacenter, you can change the default private network to make an external network the default, which provides easy connectivity when you deploy a new environment.
When using SDN integrations, Abiquo may manage the IP addresses of the external networks.
An Unmanaged network is a type of the External network with IP addresses that are managed outside of Abiquo.

Public network

In an Abiquo datacenter, tenants can share a public network.
First tenants obtain (purchase or reserve) IPs in public networks for their virtual datacenters and then they assign them to VMs.
Abiquo's accounting services track public networks, so they are ideal for providing true public IP addresses that will be charged back to an enterprise.

In public cloud, the Cloud Admin does not manage public networks.
However, tenants acquire floating IPs for their virtual datacenters and assign them to their VMs as in private cloud.

To create a public network and IPs

From the Infrastructure side, select Datacenter, Network tab, and select the "Public" sub-tab.
Click the + icon to add a VLAN
Fill in the necessary information and click Save
Create IPs as required. Click Accept
Review the list of available IPs and make unavailable any IPs that are required for administration purposes.
Use the arrow button to move one or more IPs from available to unavailable
If you hear that a specific Public IP might have been misused, you can quarantine it.
Enterprise tenants cannot use quarantined IPs when they provision their VMs.
Click the quarantine button to make an IP unavailable to enterprises in the 'PUBLIC IPS' table.

Storage

In Abiquo datacenters, Abiquo uses several different storage types.

Through the hypervisor, Abiquo supports any storage that can be used as a hypervisor datastore.
So Abiquo can provision a new VM to any storage type including Fibre Channel, iSCSi, and NFS.
Abiquo uses datastore tiers to offer different service levels for the user to deploy and also to create self-service VM hard disks, which are not persistent.

Abiquo uses NFS storage for its Catalogue where VM images and templates are stored within each datacenter.

Allocation rules

In Abiquo datacenters, allocation rules define how Abiquo will use the underlying infrastructure to deploy VMs.
The allocation rules include compute load level rules where you can configure allocation or subscription of CPU and RAM, and storage load level rules for datastores.
Abiquo supports compute allocation rules at the VMware cluster level.
The Cloud Admin can also use features built into the underlying hypervisor technology, such as VMware's Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS).

Public cloud

On the Public tab, the Infrastructure view displays the public cloud regions and the tenants that can use these regions.
Each tenant will also require their own set of public cloud credentials that will enable them to use the API of the cloud provider.

Abiquo offers some basic guides on how to Obtain public cloud credentials.