AWS integration

1 Introduction to Abiquo and AWS
2 Display billing dashboards
3 Public cloud regions
4 AWS credentials for testing Abiquo
5 Managing AWS partner accounts
6 Onboard a standard AWS account
7 Hardware profiles
8 VM template catalogue
9 Virtual datacenters
10 Private networks
11 Public IP addresses
12 AWS firewalls
13 Virtual machines
14 Load balancers
15 Volumes
16 VPNs
17 Related links for Abiquo and AWS

Introduction to Abiquo and AWS

Abiquo has an integration with AWS for compute and billing.

Abiquo creates virtual datacenters that correspond to virtual private clouds (VPCs) in AWS. You can also onboard VPCs and their associated resources, to create virtual datacenters in Abiquo.

Abiquo creates VPCs in AWS

For a summary of the AWS compute features that Abiquo supports, please see AWS features table.

Abiquo XaaS also enables you to offer AWS PAAS services as part of your cloud platform, including RDS, and Route 53. For more details, see Abiquo Amazon RDS service and Abiquo Route53 service.

Display billing dashboards

Abiquo displays the billing data from Amazon (AWS) on the billing widgets. The billing widgets are part of the default Hybrid dashboard. See Display Amazon billing data, which is for AWS partners and their customers, and Display Amazon billing data for standard accounts.

Abiquo displays AWS billing data on the dashboard

Public cloud regions

To use AWS in Abiquo, the first step is to create a public cloud region.

Creating an Abiquo public cloud region for AWS is a similar process to creating a datacenter. But you can create multiple regions at the same time. And you can share the remote services with datacenters and other public cloud regions.

Amazon may require separate credentials for some groups of regions, and the user should select the separate provider for these regions.

For more details, see Create a public cloud region

AWS credentials for testing Abiquo

You can add credentials for each Amazon account to ONE Abiquo enterprise only.

If you would like to try the AWS compute and billing features, you can use a standard account, which is an account that was purchased directly from Amazon, and not from a partner or part of an organization.

See Obtain AWS credentials.

To try billing features, add the following properties to your Abiquo enterprise, with the appropriate values for your AWS account.

"amazon_discount" : "0"
"amazon_bucket": "my_bucket_name"
"amazon_bucket_region": "my_bucket_region_such_as_us-east-1"
"amazon_report_name": "from amazon_bucket/amazon_bucket_prefix/amazon_report_name/file.csv"
"amazon_bucket_prefix": "from amazon_bucket/amazon_bucket_prefix/amazon_report_name/file.csv"
"amazon_billing_compress_format": "ZIP" (may also be "GZ")

Some regions, such as those in China, may require separate credentials, and for these regions, the administrator must select a separate provider, for example, AWS (China).

Managing AWS partner accounts

If you have a Partner or Organization account, you can give customers access to compute and/or billing features. To create a tenant hierarchy to manage your customer accounts, see Onboard an Azure CSP or AWS organization account.

You can also add a customer’s standard or organization account to a key-node for them to use their accounts in tenant enterprises.

Onboard a standard AWS account

If you would like to try the AWS compute and billing features, you can use a standard account, which is an account that was purchased directly from Amazon, and not from a partner or part of an organization.

You can also onboard standard accounts into your reseller hierarchy.

To use a standard account in Abiquo, first Obtain AWS credentials for compute and billing, and add the credentials to an Abiquo enterprise.

And for billing features, add the following properties to your Abiquo enterprise, with the appropriate values for your AWS account.

"amazon_discount" : "0"
"amazon_bucket": "my_bucket_name"
"amazon_bucket_region": "my_bucket_region_such_as_us-east-1"
"amazon_report_name": "from amazon_bucket/amazon_bucket_prefix/amazon_report_name/file.csv"
"amazon_bucket_prefix": "from amazon_bucket/amazon_bucket_prefix/amazon_report_name/file.csv"
"amazon_billing_compress_format": "ZIP or GZ"

Hardware profiles

Abiquo will automatically retrieve the hardware profiles for your public cloud region. The platform also registers if a hardware profile is Active and if it belongs to the Current generation.

See Hardware profiles

VM template catalogue

After you create a public cloud region and add credentials, you can go the Catalogue and onboard a selection of AWS VM templates for your users.

You can find the AMI IDs of some common templates in the Amazon EC2 quick launch wizard
For Marketplace templates, users should accept the EULA in the Amazon console because this cannot be done using the AWS API by Abiquo

For more details, see Import public cloud templates

Abiquo should set the correct Operating System and Username for the template for SSH connections to the VM. For more details, see How to deploy a VM in AWS using Abiquo.

Virtual datacenters

In AWS, Abiquo virtual datacenters are Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). Abiquo always creates an address space and VPC network. Then the user can select options to create subnets, or None.

If the user creates a virtual datacenter with a Default network, then Abiquo creates a VPC and a private subnet.

With a Custom private network, the user can specify a private subnet or a public subnet for the VPC. To create a public subnet, select the Internet gateway checkbox.

Known issue in Abiquo 6.2.0: you can select the NAT gateway checkbox but this will cause an error because there is no existing public subnet with an internet gateway connection.

If the user selects the option of None, Abiquo will create the VPC and VPC network only. So the user must enter the Address range for the VPC network.

When you create a VDC with a custom private network, you can also specify the address range of the virtual network. And you can create, onboard, and delete address ranges from AWS. See Manage address ranges.

Private networks

After you create a virtual datacenter, you can create more private networks, which are private subnets or public subnets in your AWS VPC. You can also create private subnets with a route to a NAT gateway.

To create a public subnet, select the Internet gateway checkbox.

To give your VMs outbound access to the internet, if you have an existing public subnet, create a private network and select the NAT gateway option. This option will use an existing NAT gateway or create a new one, and then create a private subnet with a route to the NAT gateway. This will let you create a configuration similar to the AWS configuration of a VPC with private subnets and NAT (see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-example-private-subnets-nat.html).

A NAT gateway uses an Elastic IP in AWS, so check the cost of this configuration.

When you deploy a VM (AWS instance) in the private network with the NAT gateway, it will have outbound internet access.

Public IP addresses

In AWS, you can allocate and assign public IPs as in other public cloud providers. The platform will onboard and synchronize Elastic IPs as public IPs within virtual datacenters. To be able to connect to your VM, add a private IP address in a public subnet, and a public IP address.

The Optimization dashboard in the Home view will display your unused public IPs.

AWS firewalls

Abiquo supports firewall policies, which are AWS Security Groups. In Abiquo, you can apply one firewall to a VM and the firewall will apply to all vNICs. Abiquo will onboard the default firewall policy, which will allow all outbound traffic.

To be able to connect to your VMs, add an inbound firewall rule to the firewall policy to allow the SSH protocol. Allow connections from the desired IP address (in this case we used 0.0.0.0/0 for convenience, but we don’t recommend this for security reasons).

See Manage firewalls

Virtual machines

To create a VM in AWS, select a template and enter the VM Name.

Then select a Hardware profile as in other public cloud providers.

To be able to connect to your VM, edit your VM and add a private IP and a public IP address in the first vNIC sequence position.

To be able to connect to the VM, also select the firewall to allow connections.

After you deploy your VM, you should be able to connect using the VM template Username and the private key that corresponds to the SSH public key of your Abiquo user.

Do not rename an Amazon instance directly in AWS or you will break the link between Abiquo and the VM. If the link is broken, you will not be able to manage the VM with Abiquo again. Do not delete the tags created by Abiquo.

If you need to manage your Abiquo Elastic IPs in Amazon, synchronize them to update changes in Abiquo or you may see unexpected results.

Load balancers

Abiquo supports Classic load balancers and Application load balancers in AWS.

For more details of the integration, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311375705.

And for details of how to use the load balancer features, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311370564 and https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311365061.

Volumes

You can create volumes of external storage in AWS at the virtual datacenter or location level. Abiquo volumes are EBS disks in AWS. Abiquo support for EBS storage includes encryption and delete on termination volumes. For more details, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311365878

Then when you create or edit a VM, you can go to the Storage tab to drag a volume into the VM configuration.

After you detach a volume from a VM or delete a VM, the synchronization process will make the volume available in the public cloud region.

When you undeploy a VM, the platform will delete the boot volume because it defines the boot volume as a non-persistent hard disk. But the platform will keep the other disks as volumes in the virtual datacenter. Users can add these volumes to other VMs and move the volumes to other virtual datacenters in the same public cloud region.

When you onboard resources, if a VM has volumes attached, the platform will add them to the VDC and VM. Otherwise, it will add them to the cloud location.

For more details, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311362829

VPNs

Abiquo supports AWS VPNs. For more details, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311372855.