Add public cloud

This guide describes how to add public cloud to your Abiquo cloud platform. This guide assumes that you already have a private cloud platform.
For a brief introduction to public cloud, see Abiquo quick walkthrough of public cloud.
For details of some important public cloud features in Abiquo, see Abiquo public cloud guide.

Choose your public cloud use case

Before you add a cloud provider you should get to know the platform and its public cloud features.

Check which features that the platform supports for your provider. See Public cloud providers.
Read about how the platform works with the provider. See Public cloud integrations.

If your customer would like to use their own account (partner or standard), Abiquo can manage accounts for the major public cloud providers.

For details of how Abiquo manages accounts in VCD, see VMware Cloud Director integration

You can offer your customers access to a public cloud provider with:

Compute features and/or
Billing features, such as billing dashboards and budgets

You can use Abiquo with reseller accounts for AWS and Azure.

You can use Abiquo to create customer accounts in the cloud providers and automatically add compute credentials to customer tenants.
You can use Abiquo to create users in the cloud provider portal, and use a shortcut link to connect to the portal.
You can display billing data for the tenants in the hierarchy

Obtain your public cloud credentials

Abiquo uses two kinds of credentials: compute credentials and pricing credentials.

For reseller customer credentials, there may be different credentials to use for compute features and for billing only.

For details, see Obtain public cloud credentials.

Modify user roles to add public cloud

Based on which public cloud providers and features you will offer, you should modify your roles to add new privileges to enable the new features.

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Create a public cloud region

This section describes how to create a public cloud region.
For an introduction to public cloud in Abiquo, see Public cloud

A public cloud region represents a region of a cloud provider in Abiquo, to enable users to have compute access: to use virtual resources and deploy VMs in the cloud, and/or billing access: to display cloud billing data on the dashboard.

Privileges: Access Infrastructure view and PCRs, Manage public cloud regions

Before you begin:

For vCloud Director, obtain credentials for the Administrator or Organization. For more details see VMware vCloud Director integration

To create a public cloud region:

Go to Infrastructure → Public
Click the + add button at the bottom of the Public cloud regions list
On the Create public cloud region dialog, enter the base Name and select the Provider.
Select the Regions
- The platform will create a region with Name, and for the next regions it will add a suffix of _1, _2, and so on, and the region’s location.
- If the platform cannot create a region, it will go on to the next region on the list.
Click Next
For the Virtualization manager, in the remote services IP address field, enter the domain name of the Remote Services server.
1. You can share the remote services with multiple public cloud regions or private cloud.
  1. You can select the Remote Services server from the pulldown, and click Duplicate IP address
2. We recommend that you Check the remote services before you save your regions
Click Save
The platform will create your public cloud region.

To allow users to deploy in the public cloud region, edit your enterprises to:

Edit Datacenters and add the new region to the Allowed datacenters list
Add Credentials for the cloud provider API. See Obtain public cloud credentials
1. You will require one separate account for each enterprise using a public cloud region, which means one account or subscription per enterprise
2. For certain regions, such as those in China, you will require separate credentials, which you can enter separately after you select the appropriate provider, such as Amazon CHINA
3. For vCloud Director, you will require Organization and Administrator credentials

To allow administrators to manage the public cloud region, edit your user scopes and add the new region

Reseller hierarchy

In public cloud, when you have a reseller account, such as an Azure CSP or Amazon partner account, you can use a reseller hierarchy to manage your reseller customers.

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Create a reseller scope

If you are not using a tenant hierarchy in private cloud, create a new reseller scope. If you already have a reseller scope, check that your reseller scope is correctly configured for public cloud as described here.

To define a tenant hierarchy you will need a reseller scope and one or more customer scopes.

Your reseller tenant with a reseller scope will be at the top of a hierarchy of customer tenants with customer scopes.

To define a scope hierarchy, select a Parent scope for each scope.

To create a scope for a reseller tenant:

Go to Users → Scopes
Click + add
Enter the details
1. For the reseller's Parent scope, select the Global scope or no scope.
Go to Entities
Select the tenant Enterprises that the reseller will manage directly, e.g. to manage users
Select the Locations that the reseller and their customers can use.
1. Remember to select your new public cloud providers or regions!
Click Save

Create a reseller administrator user

To create a reseller administrator user.

Go to Users view → Users
Create or edit a reseller administrator user
For the Role, if you created a new role with added privileges for public cloud, select the new Role
For the Scope, select the reseller scope

Create a reseller enterprise

If you are not using a reseller hierarchy for private cloud, create a new reseller enterprise for public cloud.

This section describes how to create a basic reseller enterprise. Later, add your public cloud provider credentials, and enterprise properties, and an optional pricing model.

To create a reseller with basic configuration:

Go to Users
At the bottom of the Enterprises list, click the + add button
Enter the enterprise details:
1. Enter the Name of the reseller
2. For the Default scope, select the reseller scope. Abiquo will automatically add the reseller enterprise to its default scope
3. Select the Reseller checkbox, so the enterprise will be the reseller for the default scope.
4. To configure a mail server for the reseller to send notification emails, enter the Mail server configuration.
Optionally, go to Allocation limits and limit the resources that the reseller tenant can use
Go to Datacenters and select the locations that the reseller will use and administer.
These allowed datacenters and providers are where users of the tenant can work, for example, they can deploy VMs. This should be the same list as in the reseller scope.
Click Save

Notes and related links:

Display cloud provider billing data, see Display cloud provider billing data
Tenant metadata for reseller, see /wiki/spaces/doc/pages/338001921
To onboard the prices of hardware profiles from public cloud, see Synchronize public cloud price lists
- If you have pricing models assigned to reseller customers and you add public cloud pricing credentials for AWS or Azure, then Abiquo will automatically onboard hardware profile prices for them.
  - After the initial onboard, to stop the synchronization, you can stop the cron job that runs it

Create or modify a reseller customer scope

For your new or existing cloud tenants that will be customers of your reseller in a reseller hierarchy.

Go to Users view → Scopes
Create or edit a tenant scope
For the Parent scope, select the reseller scope
Go to Entities and select the new public cloud providers or regions
Click Save

Create or modify a reseller customer tenant

For your new or existing cloud tenants that will be customers of your reseller in a reseller hierarchy.

Log in as the reseller administrator user
Go to Users view
Create or edit an enterprise
1. For the Default scope, select the reseller customer scope
2. If the customer will have sub-tenants, select the Key node checkbox
Optionally, set Allocation limits to control your tenant’s resource usage
Go to Datacenters, and drag the new public cloud providers or regions into the Allowed column
If the reseller customer will use billing only, go to Credentials and follow the instructions at Add AWS and Azure credentials only for billing
Go to Properties and enter custom price factors as required
Click Save

Create customer cloud accounts

As a reseller administrator, you can automatically create a cloud account for your reseller customer tenant in AWS or Azure.

Log in as the reseller administrator user
Edit the reseller enterprise
Go to Credentials
Next to the cloud provider name, click the building Create account button
Select the customer enterprise and enter the customer account details

Abiquo will add the new customer compute credentials to the customer enterprise.

Create a customer tenant with XaaS and Abiquo Setup Service

With XaaS and the AbiquoSetupService, you can automatically create a customer tenant structure in Abiquo.

A child scope with name “SCOPE-” + “New enterprise name”.
A key node enterprise in the new scope with name = “New enterprise name”.
A new user with role = “Default user role” and name = “admin” + “New enterprise name”

For more details, see Abiquo Setup service