NFS Server role within Abiquo

The Abiquo Platform needs an NFS Server in each datacenter (called Appliance Library) to store the Virtual Machine templates and Virtual Disk snapshots and conversions shared among the managed hypervisors. Abiquo Remote Services and Abiquo V2V Services also need the NFS share to operate.

Actually, an NFS shared directory is enough. Abiquo does not control your NFS Server or requires you to have a specific file system layout, it only requires a big enough share to store the VM templates and Virtual Disk conversions.

You will need one NFS Server per physical datacenter managed by Abiquo.

NFS Server Requirements

Abiquo does not require anything specific from your NFS Server. It can be either a cheap software NFS server or a dedicated server from vendors like NetApp, EMC, etc. Some suggestions:

• Use external NFS Server (NetApp, EMC Celerra, etc)
• Setup a CentOS/RHEL (or any other Linux distribution) to work as an NFS Server

Cloud-in-a-Box installations have a built-in NFS server. No external NFS Servers are required.

Important The NFS shared directory needs to have an empty file named .abiquo_repository (the dot prefix is required). To create this special file, mount the NFS share and issue: touch /path-to-the-shared-dir/.abiquo_repository