Create a physical machine

To add a physical machine (also called a host or server), first discover it in infrastructure, then configure the datastores and network. You can add vCenter hosts or vCenter clusters as physical machines.

When you add vCenters to Abiquo:

• For vCenter hosts, all hosts must belong to a cluster

• Add all the hosts in the same cluster in the same Abiquo datacenter

1. Go to Infrastructure → Private

2. Select a datacenter and go to Servers

3. If there are no racks, first create a rack. See Create a rack

4. Select a rack, then click the + add button. Select Physical machine

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   Create a physical machine in infrastructure

    

5. Select the Hypervisor type, which could be a standard hypervisor, hypervisor manager such as vCenter, or a VMware vCenter cluster as a physical machine

   • Do not add a vCenter more than once, e.g., as a hypervisor manager and as a cluster!  

6. Enter the connection details. For the Manager IP, enter the IP address or the FQDN of the server. To later add more servers, use the same address type, and do not mix IP addresses and FQDNs.

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   Enter connection details to create a physical machine

   
   Using the connection details, the Discovery manager remote service will try to retrieve the hypervisors or clusters from a hypervisor manager, or connect with the hypervisor or cluster.

7. For a hypervisor manager, the multiple hypervisor selection dialog will open with a list of the physical machines managed by the hypervisor manager. Select the ones that you wish to add and click Edit to complete their details as required. 

8. After the platform retrieves each physical machine (host or server), the Create physical machine dialog will open.

Register a physical machine in Abiquo

To register a physical machine in Abiquo, do these steps.

1. Enter the Name, which defaults to its IP address, and check the other details

2. Go to Network interfaces and enable at least one network interface. To do this, select the network service type of the networks that will use this interface

3. Go to Datastores and and activate at least one datastore. 

   • For vCenter clusters, use shared datastores, and if you require local datastores, add them to single-host 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 activated on one host and deactivated on another, either as a result of user configuration or an issue (e.g. an NFS communication error on one host).

   • Do not activate the NFS repository (which may display as /opt/vm_repository) because this will severely degrade deployment performance

4. Click Save