Azure ARM features table

Configure and remove VMs

When you create a VM, you’ll select the hardware profile. The Name of the VM in Azure is the platform's VM label (friendly name). It must meet the Azure naming criteria and you cannot change it after deployment.

Onboard templates

To search for templates in Azure ARM, the format for a template ID is /Subscriptions/{subscription}/Providers/Microsoft.Compute/Locations/{region}/Publishers/Canonical/ArtifactTypes/VMImage/Offers/{offer}/Skus/{sku}/Versions/{version}

Reconfigure VMs

• You can edit deployed VMs to: attach and detach firewalls and load balancers, change hardware profiles, and reconfigure NICs

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    • The platform may require you to power off a VM to make changes to multiple vNIC configurations that were created in the Azure portal

    • You cannot change the order of NICs on an Azure VM after you deploy the VM

Power on VM

Power off VM

 Abiquo supports power off and deallocate of VMs. A deallocated VM is in the OFF state, and it has the "deallocated" attribute is set to "true".

Reset VM

Pause and resume VM

Storage

• Volumes are Azure Managed Disks. Users can onboard and create volumes, and attach them to VMs

• After users detach volumes from VMs or delete VMs, the synchronization process will make the volumes available in the public cloud region

• Users can move volumes between virtual datacenters and release them to the region

• Azure does not support premium storage for some hardware profiles. The platform does not enable you to configure VMs with premium storage

• Abiquo does not onboard VMs with Azure Unmanaged Disks but it will log a warning message

Take a VM snapshot

The Abiquo instance functionality has been disabled in Abiquo 4.7.0 pending further development. To create snapshots and recreate VMs from snapshots use the Azure console.

Remote access

Depending on template type, for example:

• RedHat: template user/password

• Ubuntu: Using your SSH key registered in Abiquo, or template user/password

Create and delete networks

• Each Abiquo VDC will map to an Azure ARM virtual network

• An Abiquo private network will map to a subnet in the VDC network

• Users can allocate and assign public IPs

  • The platform will onboard and synchronize dynamic public IPs

  • The platform supports standard SKU public IPs and basic SKU public IPs

Create and delete VPNs

Site-to-site VPNs, for example, from private cloud (NSX) to Azure, and from Azure to Azure

Create and delete VDCs

• Abiquo VDCs will not be locked to a single resource group and will be able to manage and onboard existing resources regardless of the resource group they belong to

• Each Abiquo VDC will map to an Azure ARM virtual network

Create and manage firewall policies

• The platform supports one firewall per VM

• When onboarding VMs, if the VM and firewall are not in the same VDC, the platform will not assign the firewall to the VM

• Azure allows users to create deny rules in their VM firewalls. Abiquo synchronizes firewall policies with deny rules but it does not display the deny rules, and it will not allow you to edit the firewall rules.

• Abiquo does not synchronize Azure firewalls that use application security groups

• Abiquo supports rules with multiple source IPs/destination IPs 
  
  

Use Chef

Enterprise Chef or your own server

Use Chef attributes

VM bootstrap scripts

VM variables

Stored as node metadata.

Load balancing

The platform supports Standard SKU load balancers and Basic SKU load balancers. See Azure load balancers table

Import and synchronize VMs

To onboard VMs, the enterprise must have credentials registered.

• Abiquo onboards VMs that were created using disk snapshots but it does not onboard the VM template into the Apps library. To recreate a VM (for example, from a snapshot) use the Azure console.

VM monitoring and metrics

• Abiquo supports monitoring with Azure built-in metrics

• You can also use the Abiquo monitoring server and Abiquo collectd plugin. See Use collectd plugin for custom metrics 

Dashboard billing widgets

The Home view dashboard view can display public cloud billing information, including the latest bills and estimated bill. For the default tab display, see Hybrid and Home view, and for configuration instructions see Display cloud provider billing data and Configure dashboard display.

High availability

Requires the privileges to Manage availability sets and Assign availability set to VM

• All of the VMs in an availability set must be in the same Azure Virtual Network, which means they must be in the same Abiquo virtual datacenter.

• To attach Azure VMs to a load balancer, you must add them to the same Availability set. 

Resource groups

Requires the privilege to Manage resource groups, also Delete resource groups

• When you synchronize (or onboard) a virtual datacenter (an Azure Virtual Network), Abiquo onboards ALL resource groups in your Azure account

• When you synchronize a virtual resource (firewall, load balancer, availability set, and so on), Abiquo will onboard its resource group (if it wasn't already in Abiquo)

• When Abiquo periodically onboards and synchronizes volumes (Azure Managed Disks), then Abiquo will onboard the resource groups of the volumes. This may mean that some volumes and their resource groups may be automatically onboarded before the user onboards their resources in the platform

Tags

Requires the privilege to Manage tags