Abiquo quick walkthrough of GCP public cloud

Configure your user account

1. Log in with the username and password supplied by Customer Service, or admin and xabiquo.

2. Click the user icon button in the bottom left corner of the screen and select Edit user
   (OR go to Users view → Users and select and edit your user)

3. Add an Email address and Phone number to receive notifications from the platform

4. Go to Advanced and add an SSH public key

   1. GCP currently supports SSH protocol 2 (SSH-2) RSA public-private key pairs with a length of 2048 bits. Other key formats such as ED25519 and ECDSA are not supported.

   2. For more details see How to work with SSH keys

Create a public cloud region

The cloud administrator creates public cloud regions to configure public cloud providers for users.

1. Open Infrastructure view by clicking the servers icon at the top of the main menu

2. Go to Public

3. Click the + add button at the bottom of the Public cloud regions list
   

   

4. Enter the Name of your public cloud region

5. Select the Provider

6. Select the Region to add. You can add more than one region
   

   

7. Click Next

8. Select the Remote services. Abiquo uses Remote services to connect to the providers and manage the cloud.

   1. In the first IP address box, click the down arrow and select the Remote service URL from the pull-down list, or enter the URL of your Monolithic server

   2. Click the link to Duplicate IP addresses at the top of the popup

9. Click Check all to check the connection to the remote services

   

10. Click Save

Add tenant credentials for the public cloud provider

Each cloud tenant will require their own set of public cloud credentials, and access to the public cloud region.

1. Go to Users and edit a tenant enterprise

2. To allow users of a tenant enterprise to deploy in the public cloud region, go to Datacenters, and check that the public cloud region is in the Allowed datacenters list. If not, drag it into the list.
   

   

3. Go to Credentials → Public

4. Select the Provider

5. Enter the Access key and the Secret access key. For more details, see Obtain Google Cloud Platform credentials
   

   

6. Click Add account

7. Click Save

The tenant's account will be added for the provider and displayed in the public cloud view of the Infrastructure tab.

Add VM templates to the catalogue in GCP

The Catalogue stores VM templates so that users can easily create VMs from them. In public cloud, the platform stores VM template details and then deploys from the public cloud templates. To create VMs, users select VM templates in their virtual datacenters.

1. Open the Catalogue view by clicking the Catalogue icon

2. Select Public

3. Select the public cloud region

4. Click the import template button
   

   

5. Enter the ID of a template to import, or a Name text, for example Linux, because we recommend that you use a Linux template.

6. Optionally, filter by template providers, for example, use the Canonical provider and search for an ubuntu template.

7. Click Search

8. Select a Template to import and click the import symbol beside the template
   

   

9. Select and edit the template

   1. The template name is the default name for the VM, so it may be helpful to rename it. For more details, see Google’s Compute Engine documentation: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/naming-resources

   2. To add default user details for remote access, go to Advanced

   3. Select the template Operating system. For the latest version, do not set the OS version

   4. Enter a Username. If you do not wish to use the default abiquo user, enter another valid name. For Linux, you do not need to enter a password.
      For Windows, enter a password with at least 12 characters
      See https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/windows/generating-credentials

10. Click Save

Create a global network in Google Cloud Platform

To be able to deploy a VM in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), you must add an IP in a subnet of a global network, and this means that each virtual datacenter must have a subnet.

To create a global network in GCP:

1. Go to myCloud virtual datacenters view

2. Click the globe Global section button

   From this section, you can onboard or synchronize the Global networks in a selected region, and their subnets.

3. Select Google Cloud Platform

4. On the Global networks page, click the + add button  and complete the dialog
   

   

   1. For Routing mode, select REGIONAL or GLOBAL. For GCP documentation, see https://cloud.google.com/network-connectivity/docs/router/concepts/overview#priority-and-dynamic-routing

   2. To automatically create subnets in all regions of Google Cloud Platform, select Automatic subnet creation. This option is recommended for test environments only. The subnets will have an address in CIDR notation of 10.172.0.0/20

5. Select a global network

6. Go to the Subnets page, click the + add button, and complete the dialog

   

    

   1. The Location is the public cloud region where the platform will store the subnet's metadata

   2. To use IPs from this subnet in a virtual datacenter, select the virtual datacenter.
      To deploy a VM, you must have at least one subnet assigned to your virtual datacenter

   3. For the Purpose, select Private

   4. To sample network traffic and store it in cloud provider logs, select Enable flow logs 

   5. To enable your VMs to connect with provider or third party networks with services through subnet addresses, select Private services access

   6. To enable users to deploy VMs with automatically assigned IP addresses, select Default virtual datacenter subnet

7. Click Save

Create a virtual datacenter and virtual appliance

Virtual datacenters contain the virtual resources of the cloud service. In them, users can create VMs to launch them to the infrastructure, and they can manage their networks, storage, and more.

A virtual appliance is a container for a group of VMs running in a virtual datacenter. It is like a folder that can contain a related set of VMs that are used to provide a service, such as a web stack. You can deploy these VMs together, view their performance statistics, manage VM high availability, and so on.

To create a virtual datacenter and virtual appliance:

1. To open the myCloud Virtual datacenters view, click the cloud icon

2. Click the + add button at the bottom of the Virtual Datacenters list

3. Select Create virtual datacenter

   

4. Enter a Name, and select the Public cloud region

5. Select the Global network and the Subnet

   

6. Go to Defaults and select the Subnet

7. Click Save

8. Select the virtual datacenter and in the Virtual Appliances pane, click the + add button and enter the Name of the virtual appliance then click Save.
   

The virtual appliance you create will display in the Virtual Appliances list.

Create a firewall for GCP

To connect to a VM in public cloud, create a firewall to allow access. Because this VM will only be active for a very short time, we will use basic default settings.

To create a firewall, do these steps.

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters → Networks → Firewalls

2. Select the virtual datacenter

3. Click the + add button to create a firewall for incoming connections INGRESS, and enter the Name

4. For Sources, allow incoming connections from your IP address. Or for a temporary test system, allow all connections.

   

5. Go to Inbound and add the Firewall rules

   1. From Common protocols for a Linux VM, select SSH and/or for a Windows VM, select RDP

   2. You can also add the Port for the other protocol

   3. Click Add

      

6. Click Save

7. Go to Outbound, select All traffic, click Add, then click Save.
   The platform will create the firewall.

Create a VM in GCP

When you create a VM, you can select from the compatible templates.

To connect to your VM in GCP, you will need to add a subnet IP address, as well as a public IP address.

1. To go into your virtual appliance, click Open under its Name.

2. To create a VM, click Create virtual machine and select a VM template

   

   1. For the Name, enter a user-friendly name for the VM that meets provider criteria. See  https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/naming-resources

   2. Click Save
      

      

3. Select an appropriate Hardware profile for your VM
   

   

4. On the VM icon from the options menu, select Edit

5. Click Network and select Subnets

   1. Drag the Auto-generated IP label into the NICs pane

6. Select Public and click Purchase public IP

   1. Click the + add button

   2. Click Accept

   3. Select an IP address and click Add

7. Drag the public IP into the NICs pane. Select the VNIC Sequence of 0 and click Accept
   

   

8. Click Save

9. Go to Networks → Firewall

10. Select your firewall and click Save

    

11. To go out of the virtual appliance, click the Name of the virtual datacenter or the myCloud icon. This screenshot is for Azure, but it is the same for all cloud providers.
    

    

Deploy the virtual appliance in public cloud

To deploy the virtual appliance

• From outside the virtual appliance, on the options menu, select Deploy.
  

  

• OR From inside the virtual appliance, click the Deploy virtual appliance button. You can also deploy a VM on its own with the Deploy VM button.

  

The platform will deploy all the VMs and power them on. You can select the VMs and manage them with the control buttons in the lower right corner of the screen.

Now you can relax and give your VM some time to start up.

Connect to your VM

You can connect using SSH for Linux or RDP for Windows.

1. Go to Virtual datacenters and open the Virtual appliance

2. Select the VM

3. To obtain the default username (and password for Windows), go to the General tab of the VM control panel and click the default credentials key button

4. To open the remote connection, click the console button

   

5. A console should open to allow you to connect to your VM. The platform will automatically complete the Username.

6. For Linux VMs, enter the SSH private key (also called the Decryption key).
   For Windows VMs on Azure, enter the Password.

   

   The console will open to let you work on your VM.
   

   

If you cannot connect due to an unsecured certificate error, open a new tab in the same browser, enter the host IP of the VM, and accept the certificate.