Configure Virtual Machines

This page describes how to configure VMs in detail. Before you read this page, you may like to work through Manage Virtual Machines to help you get started working with VMs. After you add your VMs to a virtual appliance, you can configure the VMs before deployment or reconfigure after deployment. Each of these configuration topics is also available as a separate page. 

Prepare to configure a VM

Abiquo supports hot-add and hot-reconfigure of VMs on ESXi hypervisors. If your VM template and VM operating system support hot-add and hot-reconfigure, you can configure the VM while it is powered on. 

After deployment, power off the VM before you reconfigure. Abiquo recommends that you configure the network before you deploy. You can configure captured VMs in the same way as VMs created in Abiquo.

1. If the virtual appliance is deployed, select the VM and go to the stop button. If your guest supports graceful shutdown, for example, if you have installed the guest tools, select the Shut down option. 
   
   Otherwise, you can connect directly to the VM and perform a graceful shutdown. Or if this option is not successful, or your VM is already prepared with all services shut down, you can select the Power off option.
2. When the VM is powered off, the status bar on its icon should turn red and the control panel should only display the lock button and the power on button. 
   
3. From the VM options menu, select Edit to modify the VM configuration. Edit the configuration as described in this manual. Note that some of the VM configuration tabs may or may not be visible, depending on your datacenter configuration and privileges.
4. After you make your changes click Save. The cloud platform orchestrator will reconfigure the VM. 
5. Deploy or power on the VM as appropriate.

VM names and power on order

VMs will be powered on in ascending alphanumeric order. Thus it may be helpful to number your VMs in front of the their names. As an example, 1_WebServer will power on before 2_Database. You should remember that although the VMs will be powered on in this order, there is no guarantee that the machines will finish powering on in the same order.

General configuration

Configure Network

Configure Storage

Configure VM Backups

• Create a VM backup
• Backup results
• Restore a backup
• Backup events
• Create a manual backup now

Create a VM backup

See Create a VM backup

Backup results

To display backup results:

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

2. Edit VM

3. Go to Backup → Backup results

The results shown may vary depending on your datacenter's backup system. Backups with a status of done or completed will have a Restore link enabled in the Action column. 

Restore a backup

The administrator may allow users to restore their own backups.

Privileges: Restore virtual machine backups

To restore a VM backup:

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

2. Edit a VM

3. Go to Backups → Backup results

4. In the Latest backups section, in the Action column on the right, click the Restore link

To display the details of the restore, in the Latest backups list, click on the backup. 

After the platform finishes the restore, it will display a status, such as done or failed.

After you restore a backup, the VM disks are under the control of the backup system, not the platform. So when you undeploy after restoring a VM, the platform will display a warning popup and delete and remove the VM's disks.

If your environment permits, you may request more than one restore of the same backup. If the status of the restore request is success or failed, Abiquo will reactivate the Restore link and you can click it to request a new restore of the same backup.

Backup events

For users the backup feature will produce the events described on the Events table page in the Virtual machine section, under METADATA_MODIFIED and RESTORE_BACKUP.

To display VM backup events:

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

2. Edit the VM

3. Go to Backup → Events

This page will display events from backup integrations. 

To view the details of an event, click on the event.

Create a manual backup now

If your backup system supports immediate backups, you can request them at any time.

To request a manual backup of a VM now:

1. Go to myCloud Virtual datacenters

2. Edit the VM and go to Backup

3. At the bottom of the Backup tab, click the Backup now button

The platform will request an immediate backup of the VM or a VM snapshot

Configure Bootstrap Scripts

Assign Firewalls

Configure Chef

Assign Load Balancers

Configure Metrics

To display and filter metrics for a VM:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual appliances

2. Open the virtual appliance

3. On the VM icon → click the graph metrics symbol

4. The metrics panel will open and you can dynamically filter and select which metrics to display. 

To update the display of a metric, click the round-arrow refresh button.

To configure the display of the metric:

1. Select the funnel filter button

2. Set the following as required

   1. Granularity, which is how often the metric is sampled

   2. Statistic, which determines how the raw values will be processed over time

   3. Last period, which is how long the display will look behind at the processed data

   4. Metric dimensions for metrics with more than one element, such as multiple hard disks, you can display metric dimensions, which are metrics for separate elements.

      1. To view metric dimensions, click Get dimensions. Select a dimension.

      2. If no dimension is selected, the default value is the average of all dimensions

3. Click Accept to save the values.

To view the exact metric values in a call-out box, mouse over the metric graph line.

To create a highlight point, click on the metric graph line.

To simultaneously view the data for more than one VM, in the virtual appliance go to the Monitoring section.

Configure Variables

Before you deploy a VM, you can set guest variables to pass user data to your VM. This functionality uses cloud-init and requires appropriate templates. In private cloud, the templates must have the guest setup flag set to cloud init. The administrator can add default variables for the VM template.

To add VM variables:

1. Go to Virtual datacenters and edit a VM that is not deployed

2. Go to Variables

3. Enter a Key and Value

   1. The length of these can be up to 255 characters each 

4. Click Add

   

5. Add more variables as required

6. To delete a variable click the trash can symbol beside the Key. To edit the Value of a variable, click the pencil edit button beside the Value

7. To apply changes to variables, and other changes to the VM, click Save

Related pages

• Definition of Abiquo concepts in Virtual Datacenters View
• Introduction to working with VMs in Manage Virtual Machines