Abiquo quick tutorial

In this tutorial you will perform the tasks of the cloud administrator, enterprise administrator, and enterprise user.

For more detailed introductory information, see Abiquo walkthrough And Solution evaluation criteria, which includes more tasks to evaluate the cloud platform.

1. Log in

Log in as Cloud Administrator with the details supplied by the Abiquo Support team, or using the default account with the following data:

• Username: admin

• Password: xabiquo

If required, contact Abiquo to obtain your trial license

2. Create the infrastructure

The cloud administrator creates the cloud infrastructure for the enterprise administrators and users.

2.1. Create a datacenter

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private

2. At the bottom of the Datacenters list, click the + add button

3. Enter the Name of your Datacenter and its Location in Google Maps format, then click Next

   Open

   

   Create a datacenter

4. Enter the details of the remote services. Abiquo uses Remote Services to connect to the providers and manage the cloud

5. In the first Remote services IP address field, enter the IP or domain name of the server running the Remote Services. For a monolithic server, this is the IP address of the server

   • If the Remote Services are all running on the same server, click the link to Duplicate IP Addresses

   • If you wish to use VM template features, such as file upload and download, run the Appliance manager over HTTPS. On the Monolithic OVA, it is preconfigured to run on port 443.

6. Click Check all to confirm that Abiquo can access the remote services.

7. Select Automatically open datacenter after creation

8. Click Save

   Open

   

   Create a datacenter, add remote services

2.2. Add a rack

An Abiquo rack is a logical entity that can mirror a physical rack with a top of the rack switch. Configure Abiquo racks to match the network configuration of your switch.

To create a rack:

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private

2. Select the datacenter → Servers

3. At the bottom of the Physical servers list, click the + add button and select Rack

4. Enter the Name

5. Optionally, to configure network tags, go to Network

6. Click Save

2.3. Add a cloud node

A cloud node is the physical machine and hypervisor host. To create a new physical machine:

1. Select your rack and click the + add button and select Physical machine

2. Select the Hypervisor type and enter the IP address or FQDN, and any other connection details as required

3. Click Accept. If you are working with a hypervisor manager, such as vCenter, select the physical machine and click Edit

4. On the General information tab, enter the Name of the physical machine

5. Go to Network and set the virtual switch interface for your machine to Service Network.

6. Go to Datastores and select the datastore and mark the checkbox to enable it

7. Return to General Information and click Check to confirm that the physical machine State is Managed

8. Click Accept

The platform will add the physical machine to the rack and display it in the tree view of the Servers tab

2.4. Oversubscribe the physical machine

To oversubscribe the CPU and RAM of your physical machine in a test environment:

1. Go to Allocation rules

2. On the Global panel, click the + add button

3. Select the Load level compute rule type

   1. If you are using vCenter clusters as servers, select Server

   2. If you are using vCenter hosts, select Server or Cluster

4. Complete the dialog:

   1. Optionally, select a specific server

   2. For RAM and CPU cores set values above 100%

3. Add VM templates to the catalogue

The catalogue stores VM templates so that users can easily create VMs from them. You can upload OVA templates from your local filesystem or download test templates from a remote repository. The templates in the catalogue are available to the virtual datacenters.

To add VM templates:

1. Go to Catalogue → Virtual machine templates

2. Select the datacenter

3. To load existing templates, beside the datacenter name, click the round arrow refresh button

4. In the Virtual machine templates pane, click the + add button and select the Create from remote template repository option

   • The Abiquo sample Remote template repository is included in the default configuration. URL: https://packer-repo.s3.amazonaws.com/ovfindex.xml

5. Select the Remote repository to display a list of the available templates.

6. Select one or more templates

7. Click Download

The platform will display the templates you downloaded in the catalogue.

To upload an OVA template, see Upload OVA templates from the local filesystem

4. Create an enterprise

In Abiquo, cloud tenants are called Enterprises.

To create an enterprise:

1. Go to Users

2. At the bottom of the Enterprises list, click the + add button

3. Enter the Name of the tenant  

4. To allow your users to deploy, enable a datacenter for the enterprise. Go to Datacenters and drag datacenters into the Allowed datacenters list

5. Click Save

6. Go to Users → Users click the + add button to add a user, and enter the details for a cloud administrator. Then create an enterprise administrator and a user.

5. Create a virtual datacenter

Virtual datacenters organize the infrastructure for providing the cloud service. From here, users can create VMs in virtual appliances and the Abiquo platform will deploy them to the infrastructure.

1. Go to myCloud view and Virtual datacenters by clicking the cloud icon

2. At the bottom of the V. datacenters list, click the + add button and select Create virtual datacenter

3. Enter a Name, and select the Datacenter and if necessary a Hypervisor type

6. Create and deploy a virtual appliance

6.1. Create a virtual appliance

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. For example, a web stack. At the virtual appliance level, you can deploy these VMs together, view their performance statistics, and so on.  

To manage each group of VMs, create a virtual appliance:

1. Select a virtual datacenter

2. Go to Virtual Appliances

3. Click the + add button and enter the Name of the virtual appliance, then click Save

The virtual appliance you create will appear in the Virtual appliances list. For more details, see Manage virtual appliances.

6.2. Add VM templates to create VMs

To create VMs:

1. To open your virtual appliance, click Open

2. Click Create VM

3. Select a template from the list of available and compatible templates.

4. For the Name enter a user-friendly name for your VM

   • This name may change when you deploy the VM if a VM with the same name already exists on the hypervisor

5. Click Save

6.3. Deploy the virtual appliance

Click the Deploy button to deploy the virtual appliance.

The platform will deploy all the VMs and power them on.

You can select deployed VMs and manage them with the control buttons in the lower right corner of the screen.

Related pages:

• Manage virtual datacenters

• Manage virtual appliances

• Manage virtual machines

• Configure virtual machines