Support for SATA disks

Introduction to SATA

Abiquo 5.1.1 introduces support for SATA (AHCI) controllers. For ESXi hosts, vCenter hosts, and vCenter clusters, you can now use SATA controllers for ISOs and hard disks. This feature enables you to hot reconfigure CD devices and hard disks. This feature also introduces some additional functionality in the user interface.

Upgrade process

As part of the upgrade process, configure SATA with Abiquo properties as described in the following section.

After you upgrade Abiquo, the first time it updates the data of managed VMs, the platform will change SATA controllers registered in the platform as IDE controllers to SATA controllers.

Capture VMs with SATA controllers

Since vCenter 5.7, when attaching an ISO using the vCenter UI, SATA is the default CD controller. Now when you capture a VM, the platform recognizes SATA controllers and manages them as part of the VM configuration.

Configure SATA in VM templates

You can select the SATA controller for CDs and disks in VM templates.

In the Apps library (template catalog), you can now edit ISO templates in the same way as you can edit VM templates.

When you create a template from an ISO disk file, you can select the SATA Controller type.

When you edit a template and create a disk from an ISO file, you can then edit the Disk and select the SATA Controller type.

To enable or disable hot reconfigure of SATA devices, use the Disks hot reconfigure option on the Advanced tab.

SATA in VMs

SATA supports resize (with the same restrictions as SCSI) and hot reconfigure.

It is also possible to change ISO disks with hot-reconfigure.

When you reconfigure a VM to assign a new virtual disk, you can select a SATA controller.

You cannot remove a SATA controller when the VM is powered on, even if you are using hot-reconfigure.

The platform will not automatically remove an unused SATA controller from a VM.

Use SATA controllers for cloud-init ISO drives

The multi-cloud platform uses a configuration drive to present the cloud-init configuration to a guest VM. By default, the platform uses an IDE controller to attach the ISO drive.

To specify the use of SATA controllers with cloud-init:

Edit the abiquo.properties file on the Remote Services server
Set the following cloudinit.sata property
```
abiquo.esxi.cloudinit.sata=true
```
Restart the Tomcat server

Use SATA controllers for ISO drives by default

The default controller list for ESXi plugins is now "SCSI, IDE, SATA".

So by default, the platform will use an IDE controller for attaching an ISO disk.

To use SATA controllers by default:

Edit the abiquo.properties file on the Remote Services server
Set the pluginmetadata disk controller properties for VMware and add SATA before IDE.
(SCSI is not important in the order because it is not used for CD or DVD drives).
```
abiquo.pluginmetadata.{hypervisor_type}.diskControllers=SATA,SCSI,IDE
```
For each hypervisor type to configure, set the property value, replacing hypervisor_type in the property key with an appropriate code as follows:
1. "esx" for ESXi hosts
2. "vmx_04" for vCenter
3. "vcenter_cluster" for vCenter clusters
Restart the Tomcat server

Disable SATA

If your version of VMware does not support SATA (for example, vCenter 5.1), then you should remove SATA support to prevent errors.

To remove SATA support:

Edit the abiquo.properties file on the Remote Services server
Set the pluginmetadata disk controller properties for VMware and remove SATA
```
abiquo.pluginmetadata.{hypervisor_type}.diskControllers=IDE,SCSI
```
For each hypervisor type to configure, set the property value, replacing hypervisor_type in the property key with one of the following codes:
1. "esx" for ESXi hosts
2. "vmx_04" for vCenter
3. "vcenter_cluster" for vCenter clusters
Restart the Tomcat server

Limitations and notes about SATA support

SATA support on guest operating systems is as follows.

Abiquo always supports two SATA controllers with unit numbers from 0 to 19, even when the guest operating system may support more.
Abiquo does not use the recommendation of SATA controller for the Guest OS selected for the template.
This feature also fixes some incorrect mappings of 32 bit operating systems for version 5.5: rhel7Guest, other3xLinuxGuest, debian7Guest, sles12Guest.