Abiquo offers Google Cloud Platform as one of the public cloud integrations.
Display Billing Data
Abiquo displays the billing data from the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) on the Hybrid dashboard. See Display Google Cloud Platform billing data
Create public cloud regions
To create an Abiquo public cloud region for GCP, follow the same easy process as for other providers in the multi-cloud platform. See Create a public cloud region.
After you create a region, to use the region, add GCP credentials to each enterprise.
For more details, see Obtain Google Cloud Platform credentials and Add public cloud credentials for a tenant
Hardware profiles
When you add the first set of credentials, the platform will onboard the hardware profiles from GCP. GCP has some common families and types with the other providers, but there may be some gaps in the families and types. When users create VMs, the platform displays only the available families and types for selection.
VM template catalog
When you have created a public cloud region, you can onboard VM templates for your users into the self-service Catalogue.
As in Microsoft Azure, the template search dialog has a Publishers section. For GCP, the publishers are public projects with VM templates. See https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/os-details.
The templates from these projects are the current versions. To configure the default projects, use Abiquo properties.
Global networks
The GCP integration manages two main types of networks: global networks and subnets. Global networks are private networks that are available in many regions (or cloud locations in Abiquo). The platform updates global networks and subnets from a region when you create or synchronize the region.
There is a new Global section where you can view and manage the global networks and subnets in the virtual datacenters myCloud view. To open this section, click the Global globe button.
You can create a global network with routing options and in test environments, you can automatically create subnets in all regions.
After you create a subnet for each region, onboard each subnet: first select the global network, then click synchronize and select the region where you will be working.
Subnets
Your users cannot deploy VMs in GCP without private subnet IP addresses, so users will need subnets of the global networks in their virtual datacenters.
Create subnets of global networks in Virtual datacenters view, Locations view, and Global view.
First select a global network, then select a virtual datacenter, if possible. We recommend that you configure a subnet as the default network because otherwise users will not be able to deploy VMs unless they manually add an IP address.
You can also add a subnet to a virtual datacenter when you create it. Or you can edit a subnet to assign it to the virtual datacenter, and also make the subnet the default network at this time.
Virtual datacenters
In GCP there is no virtual datacenter entity, so the platform will create a generic virtual datacenter to hold the resources that you onboard from each region. You can onboard the region in Virtual datacenters view. Just click the + add button and select Synchronize public cloud and then the public cloud region.
In GCP you can create a virtual datacenter in the same way as in other public cloud providers.
As mentioned above, to ensure your users can always deploy a VM, even when they haven't configured an IP address, we recommend that you go to the Defaults tab and assign a default Subnet. Abiquo will use the default subnet to automatically create a subnet IP with no user action.
The platform will create your virtual datacenter but it will not exist in GCP.
IP addresses
After you assign a subnet to the virtual datacenter, users can create IPs in the subnet to add to their VMs.
During IP creation, users can select static or ephemeral IPs. In Abiquo, Ephemeral IPs have no provider ID but they exist in GCP if they are on a VM that is deployed there. For more details, see: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/ip-addresses#networkaddresses. In subnets, static IP addresses have a name and a provider ID.
The GCP integration supports static external IPs and ephemeral external IPs. By default, for public IPs, users create static external IP, users create a public IP with Abiquo's Google Cloud Platform integration, it is a static external IP. Abiquo can onboard ephemeral external IPs as ephemeral public IPs. When the user undeploys a VM, the provider will delete the ephemeral public IP addresses.
Firewalls
The first version of the GCP integration does not allow the user to manage firewall polices. To enable the user to have remote access to their VMs via SSH and RDP (ports 22 and 3389 respectively), the platform will automatically manage a firewall rule for each global network. By default the rule will be called "abq-fw-ssh-rdp-" + the SHA1 encryption of the global network name. The platform will check for the default rule when the user onboards, synchronizes, or creates a global network, and create a rule if none exists.
Volumes
The GCP integration supports external storage volumes. Users must select an Availability zone for the volume and then add their VM to the same zone.
As always, when users edit VMs, they can go to the Storage tab and drag volumes into the VM.
Configure virtual machines
In the GCP integration, as always, users can create a VM by clicking on a template and selecting an Availability zone.
As in all public cloud providers, the user selects a hardware profile to define the specifications of their VM.
The user can also configure their VM NICs by dragging and IP addresses into the Network configuration. At this point, they can also add new IP addresses in the available networks, including automatically generated IPs. Remember that in GCP each VM must have an IP in a subnet.
Users can also add storage volumes to VMs by dragging them from the Volumes list into the Storage pane.
Remote access to VMs
Users can access their deployed Linux VMs via SSH by entering the username from the VM template and their SSH private key. (Users should register their public key in their account before they deploy a VM in public cloud).
Users can access Windows VMs via RDP with the credentials from the VM template (username and password). The platform uses startup scripts to create the login for Windows VMs. To set the time to wait for startup scripts use Abiquo properties.
VM duplicate names and onboarding
In GCP, the platform creates VMs with the VM name (ABQ_uuid) and they have a label with user's friendly name. But the platform identifies onboarded VMs by the name. So you cannot onboard a VM with a duplicate name from a Google Cloud region, even if it is in a different tenant. Abiquo will shortly start to identify the VM using the provider ID.