Introduction to resource tags

Abiquo multicloud resource tags enable you to create groups of related resources, for example, you can tag all the resources in a project. You can use tags to manage, identify, organize, search for, and filter resources.

Your tags will be local in the platform when Abiquo cannot create tags in the provider. This may be because you created an invalid tag, you created a tag on a resource that is in Abiquo only, or because Abiquo and/or the provider does not support tags for your resource.

Abiquo onboards and synchronizes tags from public cloud providers. Your provider may limit the number of tags and the format, for example, no uppercase letters.

A tag consists of a key and a value that are case sensitive and have a maximum length of 512 characters each. You can only use a key once on each resource, and a key can only have one value.

You can search for resources by tags and filter lists of resources by tags.

The multicloud tag feature enables you to tag resources in projects that use more than one cloud provider and also in private cloud, which makes it easier for you to inventory your resources. You can also display tags in the console of the public cloud provider, and use public cloud tagging features. These features may include the option to display tags on public cloud provider invoices (when Abiquo tags correspond to provider tags with a tag invoice feature).

Tags are only for read-only operations on resources and you cannot perform modify operations with tags, e.g. you cannot deploy a VM using a tag. But in Control view, when you create automation with action plans, you can select a tag filter to dynamically select a group of VM or scaling group resources by tag to perform actions on them. And administrators can create tag policies to specify allowed or denied tags for resources, and they can check compliance on a report.

Warning: Do not use tags to store sensitive or confidential data. Check provider documentation about tag security

Tag concepts

The following table describes the concepts used in the tagging feature to manage tags in the supported providers.

Term	Description
Resource	An Abiquo entity that may have a corresponding resource in a provider (e.g. VM) or not (e.g. virtual appliance, scaling group)
Materialized tag	A tag that is assigned to a resource that exists in the provider and the tag exists in the platform and in the provider.
Local tag	A tag that is in the platform but does not exist in the provider. For example, tags that are: On a resource that does not exist in the provider Not synchronized with the provider Not valid to create in the provider
Protected tag key	If a tag has a protected tag key, the platform cannot update this tag

Tag validation

Tags maybe be invalid in the provider if they:

are too short or too long
contain invalid characters
exceed the maximum provider limit on the number of tags

When you create tags, you can select the option to save invalid tags as local tags (not materialized tags).

Provider tag support

Abiquo supports local tags for all providers, including private cloud, and provider tags in public cloud.

Provider or hypervisor	Provider tags	Notes
Amazon Web Services
Google Cloud Platform		Abiquo supports labels.
Microsoft Azure
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)		Abiquo supports Freeform tags Abiquo onboards Defined tags (read-only)
vCloud Director		Abiquo uses vCloud Metadata
vCenter	-

Resource tag support

Abiquo supports tags on the following resources.

Resource	Local tags in the platform	Provider tags in one or more public cloud providers
Virtual machines
Virtual appliances		-
Virtual datacenters
VM templates
Disks	planned	-
Firewalls
Target groups		-
Load balancers
IP addresses	planned	-
Networks	planned	-
Scaling groups		-

Support for tags on resources in providers

You can user Abiquo provider tags on the following resources in these cloud providers.

Resource	AWS	Azure	GCP	OCI	VCD
Virtual machines
Virtual datacenters
VM templates
Firewalls
Target groups
Load balancers

Display tags on all resources

To display tags on all resources:

Go to Control → Tag management → Search
From this screen you can search and filter tags.

Display tags on a resource with a details panel

To display tags on a resource with a details panel, such as a VM or a load balancer:

Select the resource
On the details panel, go to Tags

Screenshot: Load balancer details view of Tags

Load balancers in virtual datacenter view

Display tags on a resource without a details panel

To display tabs for a resource without a details panel, such as a firewall or a virtual appliance:

Edit the entity
Go to Tags

Screenshot: Edit firewall to display Tags

Edit tags

To manage tags for resources that exist in the platform and the provider:

For VMs, on the VM icon, from the options menu, select Tags or
for other resources, edit the resource and go to Tags
Edit tags

To add a tag, enter the Key and Value, then click Add.

If the provider supports tags:

If you have invalid tags, you can select the checkbox to Create local tags if tags are invalid in the provider
To onboard or update tags with changes from the provider, click the round arrow Synchronize button.

To delete a tag, select the tag, then click the Delete button.

To save your changes, click Save.

Abiquo 6.0

Manage tags