Install a test environment

Introduction

This document describes how to install a basic Abiquo environment using the Abiquo OVAs.
This environment is called a Monolithic install of the Abiquo multi-cloud platform.

Required skills

Some essential system administration skills required for managing the cloud platform are as follows:

• CentOS/RedHat Linux expertise for maintaining the Abiquo servers, which are Linux servers

• Computer and network security expertise is required to configure and maintain the cloud platform

• Advanced hypervisor knowledge including VM templates

• Networking including design, switch configuration, VLAN and DHCP and/or SDN configuration

• Storage including hypervisor datastores, NFS/CIFS and optional iSCSI storage

If you are testing Abiquo, you may not need all of these skills right away, but they are required to run a production environment.

Server components

Abiquo has the following key server components:

1. Abiquo Server (Cloud orchestrator, API, UI)

2. Remote Services (That do the work of managing the cloud, with one set per Abiquo DC)

3. Optional monitoring Server (Manage VM and platform metrics data)

These components can be installed in different installation profiles.

Installation profiles

There are three main ways to install Abiquo:

1. Monolithic server (small environment, also for labs and testing)

2. Distributed environment (larger environment, better for production)

3. HA environment (large, high performance environments)

This document describes how to install a Monolithic environment. 

A monolithic environment means that you have a single server with the Abiquo Server and Remote Services. And an optional Monitoring server.

If you want to test with large templates and you want better performance, install the remote service that manages template conversions on a separate server.

Before you install, prepare an NFS folder and your networks.
Then install the Monolithic Server and the Monitoring Server from the OVA files.

(To get an idea of how all of this will look when you're done, see the diagram of the Monolithic environment below.)

For more details, see Abiquo components

NFS folder

The platform will store the catalog of VM templates in an NFS folder.
So make sure to prepare a folder with enough space to hold all your templates and a fast network connection.
The platform will automatically mount the NFS folder on remote services and hypervisors.

When you deploy a VM, the platform copies the template from the NFS to the hypervisor datastore.
The platform can also convert templates from one format to another (V2V).
If you are working with large templates and multiple formats, you may wish to install the remote service that manages this on a separate server.

Note the network address and folder name to enter during the Abiquo install process.

For more details, see VM repository folder

Networks

You will need to put the Abiquo Monolithic Servers and components on the same network, which we call the Management network.

The VM networks are a group, which we call the Service network. For these networks you will need the following:

1. A range of VLAN tags for your VMs to use in private networks.
   Configure this in your network infrastructure and then enter the tags for each group of hypervisors when you configure your Abiquo Racks.
   Abiquo will assign a tag from the pool when it deploys the first VM in a private network.

2. VLAN tags of other networks in your infrastructure that users can work with:

   1. Public networks (shared by all enterprises, users can purchase IPs)

   2. External networks (any kind of IP address, one tenant only).

Don’t forget to connect your hypervisors to the Service network… :-)

To assign IP addresses to VMs, Abiquo has a default DHCP configuration, which you can use in an isolated test environment. A
biquo also offers dnsmasq. 

For more details, see:

• Network for specifications

• Networking guide for Abiquo networking concepts

• Networking for descriptions of the networks

Appliance requirements

The Abiquo OVAs require at least the following virtualized hardware for your test environment:

• 2 CPUs

• 8 GB RAM

• 64 GB HD

Monolithic server install parameters

Before you begin the install, make sure you know the values of the following parameters that you will need to enter during the install process. 

Tip: you can note these values on a copy of the Monolithic environment worksheet. For examples, see Monolithic environment worksheet sample.

Install a monolithic server from the OVA

Follow the steps at OVA deployment.

Monitoring server install from the OVA

The Abiquo monitoring appliance is optional. To deploy the Monitoring appliance, you will need to enter the following parameter.

Follow the steps at OVA deployment. 

Prepare your hypervisors

Abiquo supports VMware vCenter with access at the host or cluster level. 
Abiquo supports any kind of datastore that your hypervisor supports.
Your hypervisors will need to mount the NFS folder.
VM remote access is via WebMKS.

To work with vCenter clusters, see Add VMware vCenter clusters as servers.

For general configuration, see VMware.

Monolithic environment diagram

When you've completed the install, your environment should be like the one shown here.

For the connections to add to your firewalls, you will also find a table in the next section.

Open

Monolithic ports and communications

Monolithic environment firewalls

This section lists the ports you will need to open on each server in your test environment.

Abiquo monolithic server

 To allow users to upload and download VM templates, you can allow an optional connection from users to this server (specifically the Appliance Manager Remote Service that handles this functionality).   

Abiquo monitoring server

NFS server

Hypervisors

Browser requirements

Abiquo UI requires a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 for productive work.
It is based on HTML5 so browsers must support these HTML5 features: Forms block, Drag and drop.

The Abiquo UI is optimized for use with Firefox and Chrome.

The cool infrastructure map uses Google Maps and the Google Maps Javascript v3 API. See How to Obtain and Install a Google Maps API Key. 

Next steps

• For a quick introduction to the platform, do the Abiquo quick tutorial

• After that, to present the platform to others, try the Abiquo quick walkthrough of private cloud

• To read more details about the platform, see Get started

• For more complete user manuals, see Abiquo cloud guides

• To get started with the Abiquo API, see The Abiquo API and, in particular, Get started with the Abiquo API