VMware

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Last updated: Feb 06, 2024Version comment
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This document refers to VMware hypervisors including vCenter clusters and vCenter hosts in private cloud datacenters.

 

Abiquo and VMware vCenter

Abiquo can manage VMware hypervisors in your multi-cloud platform at different levels as:

  • vCenter server hosts

  • vCenter clusters (as hosts)

Abiquo can also work with NSX-T to create network configurations such as firewalls, load balancers, and NAT.

  • Abiquo does not support ESXi hosts without vCenter

  • Abiquo does not support VSAN datastores

Supported versions

Abiquo has been tested with the following latest versions.

Product

Version

Build number

Notes and known issues

Product

Version

Build number

Notes and known issues

vSphere Client 

7.0.3m

 

ESXi /vCenter

7.0.3m

21784236

 

NSX-T

3.1.3.5

 

  • Tested with Abiquo 5.4.0+

 

3.2.1

 

  • Tested with Abiquo 6.1.1

NSX-V

6.4.6

14819921

 

NSX NAT

6.4.6

14819921

13252 - Cannot create a firewall on version prior to Abiquo 5.0

ESXi 6.x versions prior to 6.7 are supported by earlier versions of Abiquo.

ESXi 5.x versions are NOT supported in Abiquo 5.1.2 and higher versions.

VMware Features

This section describes the VMware ESXi features supported by Abiquo. You can manage VMware technology in Abiquo with vCenter (hosts or clusters) and vCloud Director.

Feature

Description

Feature

Description

vCenter server

 Add vCenter as a hypervisor manager, then add hypervisors or clusters as hosts

dvSwitch

 Abiquo will use the vCenter credentials. Detect all HostProxySwitch as DVS

High availability

Abiquo supports vSphere HA

Fault tolerance

 Abiquo does not support fault tolerance because it requires two VMs with the same name to be present in a cluster at the same time.

Replication

Abiquo supports replication with Zerto. Replicated VMs must be a in a separate cluster.

Clusters

 For vCenter hosts, the platform automatically detects clusters and displays them. You can also set compute load level rules at the Cluster level
For vCenter clusters as hosts, set the compute load level rules at the Server level

VM live migration

For vCenter clusters as hosts, live migrations are transparent to Abiquo
 For vCenter hosts, Abiquo supports vMotion of VMs, including those between hosts with different versions of ESXi. Abiquo supports vMotion between machines with different network service types if they are connected to a dvSwitch

Templates

 VMDK fixed ( default format)
 VMDK sparse
 VMDK stream optimized (deployed directly)

DVD

The ISO feature supports DVDs, and you can import CD-ROM configurations on VMs with IDE and SATA controllers

Remote access

WebMKS - configure the WebMKS proxy. WebMKS will always be available.

Network drivers

E1000, PCNet32, VMXNET3

Boot

BIOS
UEFI with supported guest operating system and firmware, for virtual hardware versions 13 or later. The administrator must select UEFI on VM templates

CPU hot-add 
RAM hot-add 

 With supported guest operating system. The user can mark supported templates and perform hot-add

Hot-reconfigure of NICs, disks 

 With supported guest operating system. The user can mark supported templates and perform hot-reconfigure

SDN - NSX

Abiquo supports SDN using NSX-V with gateway, ECMP, and NAT configurations.

SDN - NSX-T

Abiquo supports SDN using NSX-T. See Configure the Abiquo NSX-T integration

Snapshots

Abiquo lets users obtain a snapshot of their VM through the UI.
See Abiquo and VM snapshots for VMware

GuestOS

Support in VM template for latest GuestOsIdentifier from vSphere. See Modify a VM template and https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311369512

DRS rules

  • Rules for anti-affinity layers to deploy VMs separately

  • Abiquo can deploy VMs to separate clusters by operating system. See DRS rules for license affinity

Metrics

Customize the built-in metrics to obtain from ESXi

Hardware version

Property to specify downgrade of hardwareVersion for new VMs

 

Storage features

Feature

Description

Feature

Description

Datastores

VMFS, NFS, vVol.
Abiquo does not support VSAN datastores.
You can use any storage protocol, such as iSCSI, NFS, FC, FCoE, or direct attached.

VM disk controller types

  • IDE (default for compatibility reasons),

  • SCSI

  • SATA

VM SCSI controllers

  • VirtualLsiLogicController (default) 

  • ParaVirtualSCSIController

  • VirtualBusLogicController

  • VirtualLsiLogicSASController

VM system disks

By default, for VMs deployed on ESX/ESXi hypervisors:

  • If disks are deployed from VMDK Sparse templates, they will be in Sparse format

  • If disks are deployed from VMDK templates or conversions from formats other than VMDK Sparse, they will be in flat/fixed formats with thin provisioning enabled

Disk resize

  System disk resize
  Hard disk resize

See https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/560988173

Storage live migration

For vCenter hosts, Abiquo detects storage vMotion on all datastores

 

Host configuration

This section describes configuration of ESXi hosts.

VMware clusters as hosts

You can add VMware vCenter clusters directly as hosts, so Abiquo will use vCenter clusters instead of individual vCenter servers. When you create a physical machine/hypervisor host in Abiquo for a cluster, select VMware vCenter cluster.

The main advantages of vCenter clusters as hosts are:

  • You can make more efficient use of your infrastructure, because when users deploy VMs, Abiquo will allocate them to VMware clusters, and VMware will allocate them to hosts

  • Abiquo does not need to track VMs within the cluster because it only interacts with the cluster

All of the VMs in the cluster will be directly listed under the cluster and not on individual hosts.

General details about a VMware cluster on the details panel
General details about a VMware cluster on the Details panel

Even in a test system, do not add the same VMware servers in more than one mode (for example, do not add a vCenter server, and then add the same server in a vCenter cluster)

Host networking

On the ESXi host, the vNICs must be attached to a vSwitch.

For vCenter clusters, you must use dvSwitches (VMware distributed virtual switches or VDSs). Abiquo will retrieve the dVSwitches from the cluster itself, not from the individual hosts.

Optionally, configure the properties for the dVSwitches (see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311375440 and search for .dvs.).

Abiquo will automatically create a port group for the host.

 

Host datastores

Abiquo will deploy VMs to datastores that you register in the platform.

For vCenter clusters, you should use shared datastores, so when VMs move, they will always be accessible to all hosts.

For vCenter hosts, when you use a shared datastore, Abiquo creates a different datastore on each physical machine that is using the datastore. This means that a shared datastore can be enabled on one host and disabled on another, either as a result of user configuration or an issue (e.g. an NFS communication error on one host).

Datastore discovery

Abiquo should discover and list all of the datastores that you will use for deploying VMs. When you add your vCenters, you will select datastores from this list to use in Abiquo.

Abiquo expects to be able to identify each datastore with a UUID, so it will initially try to create a UUID folder on each datastore.

By default, Abiquo retrieves a datastore if it is accessible and not in maintenance mode on all the hosts in the cluster that mount it.

So by default, if there is a host that has all the datastores mounted, but Abiquo cannot access them (e.g. because the host is down), Abiquo will not return any datastores. You can configure Abiquo to return a datastore mounted on at least one host.

You can also configure Abiquo to ignore datastores by name.

Abiquo will automatically ignore datastores that are not accessible.

See https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/566853637

Datastore checks

As part of the infrastructure check, Abiquo will check datastores to ensure that it can deploy VMs.

Abiquo checks for the following conditions:

  • datastore is accessible

  • datastore is mounted as read/write

  • datastore is not in maintenance mode

If you activated a datastore, but it fails the datastore check, then Abiquo will automatically deactivate it. If it passes a check in the future, then Abiquo will automatically activate it again. If a deactivated datastore fails the datastore check, then Abiquo will ignore it!

Manage datastores in Abiquo

To add, update, and delete datastores, refresh the datastores on the host in Abiquo:

  1. Edit the physical machine, and go to the Datastores tab

  2. Click the round arrow refresh button. 

To delete a datastore, make sure it is empty and not attached to the host.

The datastore refresh will handle inaccessible datastores as follows.

  • Remove inaccessible datastores if they are not used by any managed VMs

  • Disable inaccessible datastores if they are used by any managed VMs.

Configuration of VM disks

Abiquo supports thin provisioning, and IDE, SCSI, and SATA disk controllers, and you can configure defaults for the platform.

See Configure VM disks for VMware and for more options, such as ISO disks, see Configure SATA for VMware hypervisors.

 

VM templates

You can upload OVA and disk files to the Catalogue so users can create VMs from VM templates by self-service.

See https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311371267 , https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311371396  and https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311375211

VM snapshots

Abiquo enables users to manage VM snapshots in the user interface. For a full feature description and configuration details, see Abiquo and VM snapshots for VMware.

 

Advanced VM configuration

See https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311372833

Capture VMs

To prepare and onboard existing VMs into the platform, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/434667521 and https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311370980.

Remote access to VMs

The platform supports remote access to vCenter VMs with WebMKS using a WebMKS proxy.

This is included in the install process. See https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/353402881

Configure VMware specific properties

Log in to the Abiquo Remote Services server (or for a Monolithic installation, log in to the Abiquo Server) and set the appropriate properties for your system to appropriate values in the /opt/abiquo/config/abiquo.properties file.

Search in the properties documentation table for the following text strings:

  • .esxi.

  • .dvs.

  • vmx_04

  • vcenter_cluster

For a list of properties filtered from the main table of Abiquo 6.1.2, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/522387810.

For full details of all properties, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311375440.

 

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