Catalogue concepts

Concept	Description

Concept	Description
VM template	To deploy a VM, the platform uses a VM template and a hardware specification. A VM template consists of a VM template definition and VM template disk files, which include the system disk and any auxiliary disks.
VM template definition	The VM template definition includes information about the disks, the hardware, and product (additional metadata: name, description, icon, category, installed software). When you load a VM template definition and disk files into the Catalogue, the platform generates a VM template based on the information in the VM template definition. A VM template definition can only include one virtual system, but you can create systems with multiple VMs using virtual appliances within Abiquo. In a private cloud datacenter, you can create VM templates from a local OVA, or one or more disk files and definition (details or OVF).
Instance template	Abiquo Instances are templates created from copies of VM disks. You can use instances just like any other template for creating new VMs. In a datacenter, an instance is linked to the original main template. The main template is marked with an `M` symbol. An instance is marked with a secondary `S` symbol.
V2V conversion	In a private cloud datacenter, Virtual-to-Virtual conversion (V2V conversion) is a process that runs to convert a new template into the default format for each hypervisor in the platform. It runs when users download VM templates, create VM instances, or upload new templates. If a hypervisor supports more than one format, then templates that are not supported by the platform for this hypervisor will be converted to the default format. Other formats will not be converted. If you add templates before you add hypervisors, (meaning that no hypervisors present), Abiquo will convert templates into the default base formats of all hypervisors.
Owner enterprise	The enterprise in which a VM template or VApp spec was created
Virtual appliance specs	Virtual appliance specs (VApp specs) are blueprints of applications. Administrators can create VApp specs by saving the configuration of a group of VMs (in a virtual appliance) to the catalogue. The user can then select to the blueprint to automatically create a new configuration.
Service configurations	For XaaS (Anything as a Service), service configurations create a connection between Abiquo and a custom service. Select from a catalogue of services, and add basic configuration, such as the endpoint of your service and the entity in the UI where users will obtain the service.
Script templates	You can save bootstrap scripts to configure VMs as script templates, so you can add scripts to VM templates to reuse them in multiple VMs. As for a VM bootstrap script, your script templates must be compatible with cloud-init or cloudbase-init or similar, and they can use VM variables. When you change script templates, Abiquo will update VM templates using the script templates but it will not update VMs using the VM templates.