VM external storage in public cloud

1 Attach volumes of managed storage
2 Detach volumes and delete hard disks
3 Change VM storage boot order
4 Modify VM volumes

This section describes VM external storage in public cloud

In public cloud, VMs can have VM hard disks (usually, boot disks) and external volumes of managed storage (e.g. S3 storage in AWS).

For basic details of VM storage and how to work with VM hard disks, which are available in public cloud and private cloud, see VM storage

Attach volumes of managed storage

Storage volumes are persistent, which means they will still be available after you undeploy the VM.

To attach storage volumes to a VM

Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters
Select the VM
If you are not using hot reconfigure, power off the VM
Edit the VM and go to Storage
The platform displays the list of Volumes available to you in the virtual datacenter. To attach a volume to your VM, drag it from the Volumes pane to the main Storage pane.
To save all your changes to the VM, click Save. If the VM is deployed, it will be automatically reconfigured.

VM with storage volumes

Detach volumes and delete hard disks

When you detach a volume, it will be available in the virtual datacenter again.

When you detach a hard disk, the platform will destroy it and all data on it.

To delete a hard disk or to detach a volume of virtual storage:

Go to Virtual datacenters → edit VM → Storage
Select the hard disk or volume
Click the detach/delete button
Confirm the delete or detach operation
Click Cancel to discard changes or Save to reconfigure the VM in the hypervisor

A volume that has been detached will now be available again in the virtual datacenter.

Detach a volume or a hard disk

Change VM storage boot order

Abiquo recommends that you change the boot order only, without making any other disk configuration changes at the same time.

On ESXi, disk hot-reconfigure supports changes to the boot order as part of disk add or disk remove operations only. If you make other changes in Abiquo, the platform will not implement them until you power off and reconfigure the

Modify VM volumes

After you add a volume of external storage to a VM, save the VM before you modify the volume.

In public cloud, when a volume is attached to a deployed VM, you can edit the size of a volume in Azure, AWS, and GCP, and the tier in Azure and AWS. To make changes to volumes in Azure, the VM must be in the deallocated state.

To modify a VM volume:

Go to myCloud → Virtual datacenters
Select the VM.
1. If the VM is deployed, in Azure, put the VM into the deallocated state.
Edit the VM and go to Storage
Select the attached volume and click the pencil edit button
For the Total size, you can enter a larger size. Remember to enlarge the partitions and file system.
For the Tier, select the storage service level
In OCI, you can select the Controller type
In public cloud, the platform does not use the Controller
For Azure and OCI, you cannot change the Encrypted attribute

Edit a VM volume in Azure

If the volume is not attached to a VM, you can make changes to it in the myCloud view in the virtual datacenter or location, on the Volumes tab.