Abiquo quick walkthrough of AWS public cloud

Configure your user account

1. Log in with the username and password supplied by Customer Service, or admin and xabiquo.

2. Click the user icon button in the bottom left corner of the screen and select Edit user
   (OR go to Users view → Users and select and edit your user)

3. Add an Email address and Phone number to receive notifications from the platform

4. Go to Advanced and add an SSH public key

   • For more details see How to work with SSH keys

Create a public cloud region

The cloud administrator creates public cloud regions to configure public cloud providers for users.

1. Open Infrastructure view by clicking the servers icon at the top of the main menu

2. Go to Public

3. Click the + add button at the bottom of the Public cloud regions list

4. Enter the Name of your public cloud region

5. Select the Provider

6. Select the Region to add. You can add more than one region

   Open

   

   Create a public cloud region

7. Click Next

8. Select the Remote services. Abiquo uses Remote services to connect to the providers and manage the cloud.

   1. In the first IP address box, click the down arrow and select the Remote service URL from the pull-down list, or enter the URL of your Monolithic server

   2. Click the link to Duplicate IP addresses at the top of the popup

9. Click Check all to check the connection to the remote services

   Open

   

   Add the remote services

10. Click Save

Add tenant credentials for the public cloud provider

Each cloud tenant will require their own set of public cloud credentials, and access to the public cloud region. Note that you can also register your tenants as a customer of a cloud reseller that is using the platform.

1. Go to Users and edit the tenant enterprise

2. To allow users of the tenant enterprise to deploy in the public cloud region, go to Datacenters, and check that the public cloud region is in the Allowed datacenters list. If not, drag it into the list.
   
   

3. Go to Credentials → Public

4. Select the Provider

5. Enter the Access key and the Secret access key. For more details, see Obtain AWS credentials

6. Click Add account.

7. Click Save

The tenant's account will be added for the provider and displayed in the public cloud view of the Infrastructure tab.

Add VM templates to the catalogue

The Catalogue stores VM templates so that users can easily create VMs from them. In public cloud, the platform stores VM template details and then deploys from the public cloud templates. To create VMs, users select VM templates in their virtual datacenters.

1. Open the Catalogue view by clicking the Catalogue icon

2. Go to Public

3. Select the public cloud region

4. Click the import template button

5. Enter the ID of a template to import, or a Name text, such as RedHat. In Amazon in the EC2 console, you can easily find a few basic templates with IDs in the launch wizard

6. Click Search

7. Select a Template to import and click the import symbol beside the template..

8. To deploy an AMI from the Amazon Marketplace, log in to the AWS console and accept the EULA before you deploy in Abiquo.

9. To add default user details for remote access, select and edit the template

10. Go to Advanced

    1. Optionally, select a Guest setup mode

    2. Select the template Operating system. For the latest version, do not set the OS version

    3. Enter a Username. For Linux, see Amazon default instance users table. For Windows, enter Administrator

11. Click Save

Create a virtual datacenter and virtual appliance

Virtual datacenters contain the virtual resources of the cloud service. In them, users can create VMs to launch them to the infrastructure, and they can manage their networks, storage, and more.

A virtual appliance is a container for a group of VMs running in a virtual datacenter. It is like a folder that can contain a related set of VMs that are used to provide a service, such as a web stack. You can deploy these VMs together, view their performance statistics, manage VM high availability, and so on.

To create a virtual datacenter and virtual appliance:

1. To open the myCloud Virtual datacenters view, click the cloud icon

2. Click the + add button at the top of the Virtual Datacenters list and select Create virtual datacenter

3. Enter a Name, and select the Public cloud region

4. Click Save

5. Select the virtual datacenter and in the Virtual Appliances pane, click the + add button and enter the Name of the virtual appliance then click Save.

The virtual appliance you create will display in the Virtual Appliances list.

Create a VM in public cloud

The list of available and compatible templates displays in the dialog when you create a VM in your virtual appliance.

To connect to your VM in AWS, you will need to add a public IP address (an AWS Elastic IP), as well as a private IP address in the public subnet.

1. Click Open under the Virtual appliance name to go into your virtual appliance

2. To create a VM, click Create virtual machine and select a VM template

3. For the Name, enter a user-friendly name for the VM that meets provider criteria

4. Select an appropriate Hardware profile for your VM

5. Click Save

6. On the VM icon from the options menu, select Edit

7. Click Network → select Private networks

8. In Amazon select subnet-xxxx, which is the public subnet.

9. Drag the Auto-generated IP label into the NICs pane.

10. Click Network → Public → Purchase public IP

11. Then on the Purchase public IPs popup, click the + add button

12. Select an IP address and click Add

13. Drag the public IP into the NICs pane

Configure the VM firewall for public cloud

To connect to a VM in public cloud, create a firewall to allow access. Because this VM will only be active for a very short time, we will use basic default settings.

To create a firewall in AWS do these steps.

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Networks → Firewalls

2. Click the + add button to create a firewall for connections and enter the Name, and select the Location and Virtual datacenter

    

3. Edit the Firewall rules and select Inbound

   1. From Common protocols for a Linux VM, select SSH and for a Windows VM, select RDP

   2. Allow incoming connections from your IP address. Or for a temporary test system, allow all connections.

   3. Click Add, then click Save.

      The platform will create the firewall.

4. Go to Virtual appliances and on the virtual appliance and click on Open 

5. Edit your VM

6. Go to Networks → Firewall

7. Select your firewall and click Save.

Deploy the virtual appliance in public cloud

Click the Deploy virtual appliance button to deploy the virtual appliance.

The platform will deploy all the VMs and power them on. You can select the VMs and manage them with the control buttons in the lower right corner of the screen.

And now you can relax and give your VM some time to start up.

Connect to your VM

You can connect using SSH or RDP or another appropriate method.

1. Go to Virtual datacenters and open the Virtual appliance

2. Select the VM

3. To obtain the default username and password, go the General tab of the VM control panel and click Default credentials

4. To open the connection, click the console icon

5. A console should open to allow you to log in to your VM. The platform will automatically complete the Username

6. Enter the SSH private key, which is also called the Decryption key

If you cannot connect due to an unsecured certificate error, open a new tab in the same browser, enter the host IP of the VM, and accept the certificate.