This section provides a list of best practices to achieve maximum compatibility of VM templates.
You can use any virtual disk in a supported format as a template to deploy VMs in Abiquo - see Template compatibility table. You can install an operating system on a VM deployed directly on a hypervisor, and then save the virtual disk file in a VM template. To ensure that your VM template works correctly, follow these steps on the VM before you save it as a VM template and make it available to your cloud users.
Disks
By default, Abiquo attaches VM system disks to IDE controllers on all hypervisors.
VMware hypervisors can deploy VMs with SAS controllers or SCSI controllers for VM disks if you configure them using Abiquo configuration properties. See the VMware configuration page in the Admin Guide.
When Abiquo deploys VMs with SCSI controllers, it uses the LSILogic SCSI controller by default. Abiquo supports additional SCSI controllers. You can configure SCSI disk controllers using Abiquo configuration properties.
Networks
Virtual network adapters
By default Abiquo uses Intel E1000 network drivers which are highly compatible with all systems. Abiquo also supports PCNet32 and VMXNET3 drivers on VMware, and VIRTIO drivers on KVM.
Configure networking to use DHCP
Select dynamically-assigned IP addresses in your default VM configuration to ensure that your VMs all receive different IP addresses! 
Erase MAC addresses from network scripts
Some operating systems, such as Red-Hat, store your VM’s MAC addresses in their network initialization scripts. Abiquo assigns a new MAC when you deploy a VM from a template, but any old network script with an old MAC will fail and the VM network will not come up. So be sure
To ensure VMs will deploy correctly with a working network, erase all trace of physical addresses in the network scripts.
Virtual disk file formats
Compressed format
VM Templates can be very large and flat formats can have a size equal to the total virtual disk capacity. To minimize download overhead when distributing a VM template, convert it to a compressed format like VMDK-streamOptimized or QCOW2-compressedSparse.
Other compatible hardware devices
For information about hardware devices that are compatible with Abiquo, please see OVF reference .