Abiquo 4.4 features

These pages describe new features and changes in Abiquo 4.4.

Cloud bursting and automation in hybrid cloud

To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the platform's Control features include monitoring alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and autoscaling. Abiquo 4.4 has a new Control view where you can manage Alerts and Action plans.

Control view for cloud alerts and action plans

In the new Control view, you can create alerts and action plans for entities across the cloud. Alerts can act on alarms from across the platform. This means you can create alerts that combine any alarms for any metrics on any VMs, any scaling groups, and any custom metric entities throughout the platform. Action plans can perform general actions, and actions on VMs and scaling groups across the cloud. Then create the triggers to run the action plans. Triggers can be schedules, or alerts with alarms from across the platform. When you create the action plan, just select the actions and entities on which to perform the actions.

Metrics across the cloud

As the foundation of cloud-bursting, users can work with built-in metrics for VMs and scaling groups. See VM monitoring and metrics. For physical datacenters, we gather some metrics from KVM and there’s a collectd plugin for vCenter. Users can also work with custom metrics throughout the cloud, i.e. for VMs, scaling groups, virtual appliances, virtual datacenters, machines, racks, datacenters, and public cloud regions, using the API. See Custom Metrics Resources. The endpoints for custom metrics also support collectd format. See Use collectd plugin for custom metrics

Alarms across the cloud

Abiquo 4.4 enables users to create alarms on metrics across the cloud. In particular, users can select the following objects from the cloud or infrastructure lists in order to create alarms on their metrics:

• Infrastructure - Datacenters - Racks - Physical machines - VMs

• Cloud virtual resources - Virtual datacenters - Virtual appliances - Scaling groups - VMs

You can use built-in or custom metrics to create alarms for VMs and scaling groups. For all other entities, you can create alarms on custom metrics.  

Scaling group metrics: in Abiquo 4.4, scaling group metrics are now separate from VM metrics. The platform still configures the same metrics used in the base VM for the scaling group, but the platform stores them with the scaling group. 

Alarm tabs: There are two new alarms tabs to replace the VM Alarms tab. Both of these tabs have expanding lists where you can select entities. 

• Virtual datacenters → Alarms

• Infrastructure → Alarms

Create an alarm: To create an alarm, select an entity from the list and click + to create an alarm, then complete the dialog. See Manage cloud alarms and Infrastructure alarms

Connect virtual networks with VPNaaS

You can now create site-to-site VPNs from Abiquo virtual datacenters to other virtual datacenters or other entities outside the platform. To create a VPN between virtual datacenters, the first site must be a virtual datacenter using VMware with the NSX-NAT or NSX-gateway features. The second site can be another VMware virtual datacenter or an AWS virtual datacenter, or another VPN site.

Group public cloud regions by provider

Administrators can configure the UI to work with groups of regions or specific regions when allowing tenants access to a provider, and when creating, editing, or viewing scopes. For details of how to configure this feature with the "config.enterprise.onlyuseproviders property" ,  see Configure Abiquo UI. When this feature is in use, administrators can access a provider including all of its regions or selected regions.

There is a shortcut to create allocation limits for all regions under a provider. To access this screen, edit the allowed provider. At this level you can also set a default role for VDCs. And you can create a scope for administrators to manage all regions in a provider or selected regions. You can also display the regions grouped by provider when displaying scopes. For vCloud Director, the provider may have multiple endpoints and the regions can be grouped by endpoints.

Define tenant hierarchies

For tenant hierarchy management, Abiquo 4.4 introduces checkboxes to mark enterprises as Resellers and Key nodes. A key node is the head of its own scope hierarchy, for example, it could be the head office of a retail chain with regional offices and stores. In the Enterprises list, the key node and the reseller are marked with (K) and (R) respectively. In future versions, administrators will be able to display aggregate statistics and billing data for resellers and key nodes.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic

The new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic integration offers all the basic Abiquo IaaS features. User can onboard and synchronize compatible VMs from Oracle regions. And they can perform the basic lifecycle of deploy and power actions. They can also create private networks, and public IP addresses, and security group firewalls. This feature has now been replaced by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure integration (OCI integration) 

VM limits

Administrators can now limit the number of VMs that a user can create at the tenant, tenant location, and virtual datacenter levels.

Display VMs in virtual datacenters

Abiquo 4.2 introduces a new Virtual machines tab that displays all workloads in the virtualdatacenter. And you can use the wildcard search to help you easily locate specific VMs. To move between icon and grid view, click the icon symbol or the grid symbol in the top right hand corner.

Search and filter VMs

On screens with lists, the platform offers a search box. It may also offer a filter button, to open a filter dialog with text boxes. Enter a text string and the platform will retrieve all entities with that string in their text fields. OR Enter a text containing one or more wildcard asterisk characters. See Search for VMs and filter the search

Control access with VDC roles

Administrators may wish to differentiate user access between providers, or even for specific virtual datacenters (VDCs) and the new VDC roles feature provides this finer access control. For example, users may have full access to private cloud and read only access to public cloud. Administrators assign roles directly to VDCs. When cloud users from the tenant access a VDC with a role, the platform replaces their user role with the VDC role.

Administrators can also create exceptions for specific cloud users. Of course, the platform never allows the user to assume more privileges through a VDC role or an exception. To set a default role for all virtual datacenters in a datacenter or public cloud region, on the Default role tab, select a default role for all new VDCs created.

Move VMs and scaling groups in virtual datacenters

In Abiquo 4.4, users can move VMs and scaling groups between virtual appliances in the same virtual datacenter. For more details, see the following manual pages:

• Move VMs and scaling groups in virtual datacenters

Restrict VMs for provider services

The restrict VMs feature for managed service provdiers enables administrators to move VMs to restricted virtual appliances. This enables managed service providers to run a customer's VMs within their virtual datacenter, so that the VMs are controlled and billed in the user manner, but without customer access.

Deploy to VMware clusters

For full details, see Add VMware vCenter clusters as servers. Customers can now take advantage of VMware cluster scheduling because in Abiquo 4.4 you can directly add VMware clusters to the platform, instead of individual hypervisors. Users can then deploy VMs and the platform will allocate them to VMware clusters instead of directly to ESXi servers. In this version, when using VMware clusters directly as physical machines, the platform will detect the server and the level above the server as usual (server - cluster) but in this case, it will be cluster - datacenter. To create allocation rules for the clusters that you have registered directly as physical machines, use the "Server" rules.

Use Dnsmasq for DHCP

Abiquo 4.4 introduces a DHCP remote service using dnsmasq, which overcomes some limitations of DHCP in a cloud environment. For VLANs, Dnsmasq uses network namespaces to provide VLAN isolation. In a private cloud datacenter, you can configure Dnsmasq instead of the default DHCP server that uses the OMAPI protocol. For full details of how to install and configure a dnsmasq remote service. See Configure DHCP remote service with dnsmasq. Note that if you already have private cloud datacenters with virtual datacenters, you will need to introduce existing platform networks. 

User interface changes in Abiquo 4.4

Improved main menu: the icon for Infrastructure has changed to a server stack. The icon for Virtual datacenters has changed to a cloud. The icon for Users has changed shape. There is a new heartbeat icon for the new Control tab. The names of the views have been moved from under the icons to tooltips. As always, you can customize the user icons and the user interface.

Improved virtual appliance cards: the platform now highlights the current state of the virtual appliance with a colored status indicator and text. And the buttons to deploy or undeploy are now gray. And the show more/show less links have been changed to vertical arrows.

Deploy all VMs button: in previous versions, when you added more VMs to a deployed VApp, the platform would display the Synchronize button. Now the default label on this button has been changed to Deploy all VMs.

Alarms on all metrics across the cloud: you can now create alarms on the Infrastructure Alarms tab and the Cloud Virtual datacenters Alarms tab. The VM alarms tab has been removed.

Control view for alerts and action plans: action plans and alerts have been moved from the virtual appliance level to the highest level to enable users to incorporate alarms from both Infrastructure and Virtual datacenters.

Classic firewalls

Abiquo 4.4 introduces Classic firewalls. Abiquo implements vCloud firewall policies and classic firewalls at the Edge level, which is the distributed virtual firewall in vCenter and NSX. When the user assigns a firewall to a deployed VM, the platform creates a new rule with the source or destination that points to the VM object. When using a NAT IP in a VM, the platform also creates a firewall rule. And when using a public IP or NAT IP as a load balancer address, the platform also creates a firewall rule. To restore the previous configuration with the firewall at the vApp network level, set the "abiquo.vcd.firewall.vappnetwork" property to true.

Abiquo enables you to onboard and edit Classic firewalls from vCloud Director. A classic firewall is the firewall service in the orgVdc Edge. Users work with classic firewalls at the public cloud region level. In the platform there is no association between classic firewalls and virtual datacenters or classic firewalls and VMs, so you may need to onboard classic firewalls separately. See Manage classic firewalls