Hybrid cloud

Previous page: Virtual appliances and virtual machines

This walkthrough describes administrator actions to create hybrid and public cloud environments in Abiquo.

Customers wish to offer convenient public cloud services with the same easy user interface. In addition to local data centers, Abiquo can manage public cloud resources.
To perform the tasks in this walkthrough, the user must be logged into Abiquo as the Cloud Operator and have network access to the public cloud providers.
And each tenant will require their own set of public cloud credentials.

To manage public cloud, Abiquo creates public cloud regions, which are similar to data centers, for public cloud providers, and clouds managed by platforms such as vCloud Director.

Note: For vCloud Director, you must enter public cloud credentials in order to retrieve the public cloud regions (for example, in vCloud this is equivalent to a Provider or Org VDC).

Create a new public cloud region from the + button in Infrastructure view.
Enter the name for the region, select the public cloud provider and mark the checkboxes for the region(s) you wish to use. Click next.
Enter the first digits of the IP address of the monolithic Abiquo server, select it from the dropdown list.
Click Duplicate IP addresses to copy remote service location, ports, and components
Click the "Accept" button to use this remote services configuration for the datacenter.

Abiquo creates new public cloud region(s) with all available resources managed by Abiquo. New public cloud regions are named first with the name that the user enters, and then with this name and a suffix of _1, _2, for example, AWS, AWS_1, AWS_2, and so on.

To work with public cloud, each tenant requires a set of credentials for working with the cloud provider API. The cloud administrator can edit an enterprise to enter the credentials. Or a tenant administrator can enter the credentials for their own enterprise, if they have the appropriate privileges. Abiquo offers some basic guides on how to Obtain public cloud credentials.

To add credentials for the current enterprise:

In the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, click on the user icon.
From the menu, select Edit credentials
Select the cloud provider
Enter the Access key ID and the Secret access key
Click Add account
Click Close

The credentials will be added to the tenant's account

In a similar way that you can capture VMs from hypervisors in private cloud, the cloud operator or tenant administrator can acquire the existing virtual infrastructure so that it can be managed by Abiquo.

Abiquo will import the following (as supported by the provider):

virtual datacenters
virtual datacenter networks
public IPs
firewalls
load balancers
VMs
templates used to create VMs, with templates that are not available marked appropriately

If the provider does not support virtual datacenters, Abiquo may create logical virtual datacenters to organize the virtual resources.

Go to myCloud view → Virtual datacenters.
Click the + add button and select Synchronize from public cloud.
Select the public cloud region
Select the virtual datacenter to synchronize from the list
Abiquo will import this virtual infrastructure from the provider. Note that Abiquo will detect network configuration but it will not enforce a standard configuration.

Imported virtual infrastructure is now managed by Abiquo and is available to virtual datacenter users. Changes made directly in the provider can be updated in Abiquo by clicking the synchronize button beside the virtual datacenter name in the VDC list.

As in private cloud, tenant administrators can define allocation limits to restrict resources available to cloud users in the virtual datacenter in public cloud. These allocation limits complement the limits set by cloud operators for the tenant.

To restrict virtual resources in public cloud, do these steps:

When creating or editing the VDC, enter Allocation limits

An allocation limit will be defined for the virtual datacenter. Users should see a popup as they exceed the soft limit and will be prevented from surpassing the hard limit.

Tenant administrators can obtain public IPs from the cloud provider and make them available to users in their enterprises. This functionality is only available in public cloud providers with public IP support, such as AWS. In some providers, such as DigitalOcean, an IP is supplied automatically, and in other providers, such as Azure, the user can choose the IP or work with the automatically supplied one.

In the virtual datacenter, go to the network tab and open the Public page. Synchronize public IPs.
Click the + button and add a public IP. Then click Add to VDC.

The public IP is now ready for adding to a VM. Remember to check how your cloud provider charges for public IPs. For example, they may charge for public IPs when they are not attached to deployed VMs. Remember to release the public IP after you have finished working with it. See Manage networks and Manage global networks and subnets

Abiquo tenant administrators can create firewalls (security groups) in public cloud providers that support them, such as AWS.

Abiquo tenant administrators can create load balancers in public cloud providers that support them, such as AWS, or Azure. Abiquo has a consistent interface for load balancers that incorporates different provider functionality.

The cloud platform can support multiple datacenters and public cloud regions, with different technologies and service levels. The template mobility feature enables VM templates to be exported from datacenters to other datacenters and to public cloud regions. So this walkthrough requires one private cloud datacenter and a public cloud region, and a compatible template, prepared according to provider instructions (see VM Template Mobility). Remember to check that the tenant is allowed to use the private cloud datacenter and the public cloud region.