Abiquo XaaS to offer Anything as a Service

Introduction to XaaS

The Abiquo X as a Service (XaaS) feature enables you to easily integrate any kind of service into Abiquo and then offer it directly to your customers.

This will help you to extend your Service Catalogue with custom built IT packages that include hardware, software, and professional services.

Abiquo offers a set of sample services for XaaS that you can add to your platform for your users.

The XaaS sample services include:

• Amazon RDS

• AWX

• Microsoft products (Azure and Office 365)

• Kubernetes pod manager

• OpenShift Helm

• AWS Route 53

Configure 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 (properties with .xas. and .service. in the property name). To view the documentation, go to Abiquo configuration properties and search for the following values.

   1. .service. 

   2. .xas.

3. On each Remote Services server, restart the Tomcat server to load the XaaS modules

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). 

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Add the XAS remote service for XAAS

The XaaS services should now be available to add to your catalogue following the steps to create default services.

Manage XaaS privileges

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

To add services (by creating default services in Abiquo), you will need the privilege to Manage default services. To add services to resources, you will need the privilege to Use default services.

To create a service to a resource, the user must have privileges to manage the resource OR the specific XaaS privilege, such as Manage virtual datacenter services for virtual datacenters.

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 access the actions on the options menu of a service, the user will require the privilege to Run actions on usable services. From this menu, the user can perform actions on the service itself 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.

Add XaaS services to Abiquo

There is a new Services tab in the Abiquo Catalogue, where you can configure service plugins. These include include Amazon RDS, AWX, Microsoft (Azure and Office 365), Kubernetes pod manager, OpenShift Helm, AWS Route 53.

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Add XaaS services to Abiquo in the Catalogue

To register a service plugin, you can select it from the Service catalogue

Then to allow the use of the service in the platform, create a default service. As always you can configure general details such as the icon and the service description.

On the Properties tab, the administrator can configure parameters that enable Abiquo to connect to the service. 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 also displays 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.

Additionally, the administrator will specify the Abiquo entities where users can work with a service. This also means where the service will appear in the Abiquo UI. The service can be available to users on the Services tab on any of the following entities: enterprise, datacenter/public cloud region, user, location, virtual datacenter, virtual appliance, and VM.  You will also be able to select the types of entities that can use the service, such as all virtual datacenters of type Amazon.

There may be another level of service configuration, for example, at the location or enterprise level, which may include parameters such as 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.

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 authorize 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.

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.

At the cloud level, the user should be able to easily work with the service with minimum configuration.

Use XaaS services

Each service has an options menu. To display the results of service actions, the user can click on the service results indicator. For example, Abiquo marks a successful action with a green tick  indicator.

The user can display the service and its state. To view the state of the service, click the colored state indicator or go to the State tab of the service. 

The user can configure how often the service state will update.