The Abiquo platform is an hypervisor agnostic Cloud solution and can manage multiple virtualization technologies. It is able to deploy virtual appliances to any hypervisor, and manage them from a rich web interface. The following sections describe the supported disk image formats by the Abiquo platform, and the different formats supported by the Hypervisors Abiquo can manage.
Supported disk format types
| Disk format | URI / Description |
|---|---|
| Disk From Device | Raw disk |
| VMDK Stream Optimized | http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/interfaces/vmdk_access.html#streamOptimized |
| VMDK Fixed Disk | http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/interfaces/vmdk_access.html#monolithic_flat |
| VMDK Sparse Disk | http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/interfaces/vmdk_access.html#monolithic_sparse |
| VHD Fixed Disk | http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualserver/bb676673.aspx#monolithic_flat |
| VHD Sparse Disk | http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualserver/bb676673.aspx#monolithic_sparse |
| VDI Fixed Disk | http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=8046#monolithic_flat |
| VDI Sparse Disk | http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=8046#monolithic_sparse |
| QCOW2 Fixed Disk | http://people.gnome.org/~markmc/qcow-image-format.html#monolithic_flat |
| QCOW2 Sparse Disk | http://people.gnome.org/~markmc/qcow-image-format.html#monolithic_sparse |
Hypervisor compatibility table
The following table shows the different formats supported by the hypervisors. In Community Edition the images downloaded from the Appliance Library view must be of a format compatible with the target hypervisor in order to be able to deploy it.
| Hypervisor | Disk Format |
|---|---|
| VirtualBox | Disk From Device |
| VirtualBox | VMDK Fixed Disk |
| VirtualBox | VMDK Sparse Disk |
| VirtualBox | VHD Fixed Disk |
| VirtualBox | VHD Sparse Disk |
| VirtualBox | VDI Fixed Disk |
| VirtualBox | VDI Sparse Disk |
| KVM | Disk From Device |
| KVM | VMDK Fixed Disk |
| KVM | VHD Fixed Disk |
| KVM | VHD Sparse Disk |
| KVM | QCOW2 Fixed Disk |
| KVM | QCOW2 Sparse Disk |
| Xen | VMDK Fixed Disk |
| Vmware ESXi | VMDK Fixed Disk |
| Vmware ESXi | VMDK Sparse Disk |
| Hyper-V | VHD Fixed Disk |
| Hyper-V | VHD Sparse Disk |
| XenServer | VHD Fixed Disk |
| XenServer | VHD Sparse Disk |
Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V)
 | Enterprise Edition Functionality This feature is available in Abiquo Enterprise Edition |
Each time a user downloads an image from a remote repository, a background process is started to convert it to all necessary formats to guarantee that the image can be used in every hypeorvisor. Also, when a user creates an instance of a virtual machine, the same V2V process is started, to ensure that the instance will be ready to be deployed in any hypervisor.
 | About VMDK Stream Optimized The default format for images in a repository space should be VMDK Stream Optimized. This format is not compatible with any hypervisor, but is the most compressed one and the best format to move disks along the Interntet. Using Abiquo V2V process, VMDK Stream Optimized images can be downloaded and get ready to be deployed in any hypervisor. |
