Create Virtual Machine instances

Cloud Admin	Enterprise Admin	User

Preface

By default, the Abiquo platform deploys to the target physical infrastructure the images from the Appliance Library that are available to the datacenter. This deploy process is done by copying the image from the Appliance Library to the target hypervisor with the particular Virtual Appliance configuration.

This means that when a Virtual Appliance is undeployed, all changes made to the Virtual Machines are lost, because in next deployment the image files will be copied again from the Appliance Library to the target hypervisor.

To avoid this problem, Abiquo introduces the concept of an Instance of a Virtual Image. These instances are a snapshot of a Virtual Machine at a given time, that is stored in the Appliance Library in order to make the modified Virtual Machine be ready to be deployed.

This is not a solution that keeps the state of a Virtual Machine. This is only a way of creating more complex Virtual Machine configurations and to prepare a set of Virtual Machines that fit user needs. The stateful approach of Virtual Machines is covered in the Create Stateful Virtual Machines section.

Creating Virtual Machine instances

To create an instance of a Virtual Machine, enter the Virtual Appliance where the Virtual Machine is located, and click the button.

Virtual Machine prerequisites The Virtual machines must be deployed before creating an instance. It doesn't matter if they are running or stopped, but they must be deployed.

A popup will appear with a list of all Virtual Machines that can be selected to create an instance.

The available options are:

• Select all virtual images of the current virtual application.
• Select specific virtual images to bundle.
• Update current virtual images with this bundled version. This option will delete any previous versions!

Select the desired images and start the create instance process. At the end, the Virtual Appliance will be undeployed. If the Update current virtual images check was selected, the Virtual Appliance will be updated and using the instance images.

The new instance images will appear in the left-side panel:

Instance images can easily be identified according to the following convention:

• Master images include a yellow triangle and the letter M (Master).
• Instance image icons include a blue triangle and the letter S (Slave).
• Instance image names consist of the original image name, plus a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID).