Abiquo XaaS

The Abiquo XaaS feature enables you to offer anything as a service, and on demand. So your users can access custom services as part of a fully functional multi-cloud platform.

Abiquo's XaaS capabilities go beyond the traditional Cloud Management Service Catalogue with IT packages to provide hardware, software, and professional services for customers and resellers.

And using the XaaS SDK, you can rapidly create IT templates/workflows that also use existing Abiquo capabilities (monitoring, billing, pricing, asynchronous architecture, etc.)

Configure Abiquo XaaS

To configure XaaS:

1. Obtain your separate license for the Abiquo XaaS feature and add it to Abiquo

   1. After you add your license, restart the Tomcat Services of the Abiquo API and Remote Services

2. Configure XaaS properties with appropriate values:

   1. .service. properties: see Abiquo configuration properties and search for .service.

   2. .xas. properties: see Abiquo configuration properties and search for .xas.

3. On all Remote Services servers, restart the Tomcat service to load the XaaS services

4. Edit a datacenter or public cloud region and add the XAS remote service.

Abiquo manages XaaS with a new remote service, the Service manager (XAS), which is required for XaaS. It is similar to the Discovery Manager remote service (NARS).

Open

Add the XAS remote service for XaaS

Manage XaaS privileges

The XaaS feature has several new privileges that complement the existing resource privileges in Abiquo.

To allow a user to add new services with default service configurations in the catalogue, assign the Manage default services privilege.

To allow a user to add services to resources, assign the Use default services privilege.

• And for each resource, assign the user privileges to manage the resource OR the specific XaaS privilege, for example, Manage virtual datacenter services.

  • The privileges to manage services allow access to the Abiquo +add, pencil edit, and trash bin delete buttons. From these buttons, the user can perform actions on the representation of a service in Abiquo, which does NOT affect the service in the provider.

To perform actions on a service, using the service options menu, requires the Run actions on usable services privilege.

• From the service options menu, the user can perform actions on the service in the provider.
  The credentials in Abiquo may require specifc permissions in the provider 

The read-only user role (ENTERPRISE_VIEWER) does not have the privilege to Run actions on usable services.

The privileges for XaaS are documented in the Privileges section.

Add XaaS services to Abiquo

To add XaaS services to Abiquo

1. Check the requirements for each service as described in the XaaS service catalogue below

2. Follow the specifc steps for each service or the general steps to add XaaS services as described here

To add a service to Abiquo, create a default service configuration:

1. Go to Catalogue → Services tab

2. Click the + add button to create a default service configuration
   
   

   Open

   

   Create a default service configuration

3. Select the service from the Service catalogue
   
   

4. Create the default service. Enter general details such as the icon and the service description

5. On the Properties tab, the properties may be optional because by default, the service may use an extractor to obtain details from the Abiquo platform.
   For example, the RDS Service can obtain the AWS credentials from an enterprise cloud location.
   The tab can also display the properties that users may need to enter to use the service, and the administrator can also configure Choices, so a cloud user can select from the available options.
   
   

6. On the Can be used by tab you can specify the Abiquo entities where users can work with a service. The following entities can have a Services tab: enterprise, datacenter/public cloud region, user, location, virtual datacenter, virtual appliance, and VM.  You can also select the types of entities that can use the service, for example, all PCRs of type Amazon. The service will be available to users on the Services tab of the specified entities.
   
   

7. After you create a default service configuration, you can allow users to work with the service. Go to the Service configurations tab of an allowed entity and add the service. You may need to add more configuration at the entity level. For example, at the location or enterprise level, you may need to add endpoints and credentials. When a service configuration has all of the required parameters, the status indicator will be green, and the user will be able to work with the service to perform the available actions. Some services may be able to discover other services. For example, the AWX service can query an AWX server and obtain the workflows, and add them to Abiquo.
   
   

As mentioned above, a service may obtain some data from the Abiquo API, and it may also use the Abiquo API to make changes. To use the API, the user should create an OAuth Application and the XaaS feature will automatically authorise the tokens. Abiquo also supports Basic authentication for the API.

When using the Abiquo API, you can access services via services endpoints in the /cloud section. These provide access to schemas, states, configurations, tasks, actions, and results for each service.

XaaS service catalogue

The following sample services are available for Abiquo users.