Add VMware vCenter clusters as servers

You can add VMware vCenter clusters to Abiquo as server hosts. This means that Abiquo will manage vCenter clusters instead of individual vCenter servers.

In Infrastructure, you manage the cluster directly without managing individual servers and this will save you administration time. And you can still manage your servers in vCenter. 

All of the VMs in the cluster will be directly listed under the cluster.

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General details about a VMware cluster on the details panel

When you add vCenter clusters as hosts, you can take advantage of VMware cluster scheduling, which will fully manage the VMs on the vCenter servers within the cluster. VMware's Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) works at a lower level than Abiquo scheduling and will improve vCenter performance.
And Abiquo does not need to manage VM move events because from Abiquo's perspective all of the VMs in the cluster are on a single server.

When users deploy VMs, the platform will allocate them to VMware clusters instead of directly to ESXi servers. This means that you will be able to make better use of your resources, because scheduling to clusters instead of servers is much more efficient. You may be able to deploy to a cluster that is at 90% of its capacity, but you would not be able to deploy to individual servers in this cluster. This is because the vCenter manager can move VMs around the cluster according to performance needs. 

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Edit the general information about a VMware vCenter cluster

Networking

When using vCenter clusters as servers, Abiquo will only search for network interfaces that are dvSwitches (VMware distributed virtual switches or VDSs). Abiquo will retrieve the dVSwitches from the cluster itself, not from the individual hosts. Optionally, configure the properties for the dVSwitches.

Datastore types

The following sections describe datastore types for vCenter clusters as hosts.

Shared datastores

Abiquo recommends the use of shared datastores with vCenter clusters to ensure mobility within the cluster where all hosts can access all datastores. 

• When you use a shared datastore, the platform creates a different datastore on each physical machine using the datastore.
  This means that a shared datastore can be enabled on one host and disabled on another, either as a result of user configuration or an issue (e.g. an NFS communication error on one host).

Local datastores

Abiquo does not recommend local datastores but if you need to work with local datastores, configure a tier with the local datastores of only a specific host.
This will ensure that VMs can always find a valid local datastore, 

The platform represents the VMware cluster as a physical machine/hypervisor host, so it does not track the host entities in vCenter. 

Add datastores

When you add a new cluster as a host, Abiquo discovers the datastores and you should enable the datastores to use in Abiquo to deploy VMs.

When adding the host, do these steps

1. Go to Datastores and and enable at least one datastore. 

   • For vCenter clusters, use shared datastores, and if you require local datastores, add them to single-host datastore tiers.
     See Manage datastore service levels with datastore tiers

     • When you use a shared datastore, the platform creates a different datastore on each physical machine using the datastore.
       This means that a shared datastore can be enabled on one host and disabled on another, either as a result of user configuration or an issue
       (e.g. an NFS communication error on one host).

   • Do not enable the NFS repository (usually /opt/vm_repository) because this will severely degrade deployment performance

      

2. Click Save

Default discovery behavior

Abiquo will discover and list all of the datastores that you will use for deploying VMs.

By default Abiquo retrieves a datastore if it is accessible and not in maintenance mode on all the hosts in the cluster that mount it.

So if there is a host that has all the datastores mounted, but Abiquo cannot access them (e.g. because the host is down), Abiquo will not return any datastores.

At least one host configuration

From Abiquo 6.0.1, you can configure Abiquo to retrieve a datastore if it is mounted, not in maintenance mode, and accessible on at least one host in the cluster.
To create this configuration, edit the abiquo.properties file on the Remote Services server, and enable the following property.

Datastore checks

See VMware

Mounting NFS repository on vCenter hosts

You configure the NFS repository with the abiquo.appliancemanager.repositoryLocation property. When you create a datacenter, Abiquo will store the repository location in the Abiquo database.

In general, Abiquo will mount the NFS repository automatically. However, the platform will not check that the repository is correctly mounted on hosts in the vCenter cluster until it needs to use the repository.

When a user tries to deploy a VM, the platform will select a host and check that it can mount the datastore and the NFS repository. If the platform cannot correctly mount the NFS repository on any of the hosts in the cluster, the deploy will fail.

If the NFS repository is correctly mounted, the platform will copy the disk from the repository to the datastore. If the selected host is not connected or in maintenance mode, the platform may deploy the VM to another host.

In addition, it is important to note:

• The platform only checks the mount information for hosts in the cluster that are connected and not in maintenance mode.

• If it is not possible to mount the NFS on a host, then it doesn't abort the operation. 
  Errors mounting the repository are reported as a WARN  in the virtualfactory.log of the Virtualization Manager remote service.

  • Cannot mount nas 'nfs-location' in 'hostName'

• If a host in the cluster mounts the NFS repository but it is not properly mounted, then the platform does not try to fix it.
  It is only reported as a WARN in virtualfactory.log of the Virtualization Manager remote service.

  •  NFS repo 'nfs-location' in host 'hostName' ('host-id') - not mounted, not accessible or not readWrite

Allocation rules

When using VMware clusters directly as physical machines, the platform will detect the server and the level above the server as usual (server - cluster).
However, for clusters as servers, it will be cluster - datacenter. To create allocation rules for the clusters that you have registered directly as physical machines, use the Server rules, not the cluster rules.