Manage Virtual Datacenters

What is a Virtual Datacenter

A virtual datacenter is an abstraction of a physical datacenter that offers the same capabilities (such as computing power, network infrastructure, external storage system, backup, security, etc) with the advantages of cloud computing technology:

• Virtualization
• Pay-as-you-go billing
• Quickly scalability
• Technology and hardware abstraction.

This allows cloud users to run their applications in a more economical and flexible way. A virtual datacenter offers the classical datacenter infrastructure as a service.

With Abiquo, it is easy to create, manage and configure virtual datacenters from the Virtual Datacenters view.

If you have permission to manage virtual datacenters, from the virtual datacenter view you can:

Button	Action
	Create a new Virtual Datacenter
	Remove an existing Virtual Datacenter
	Edit the selected Virtual Datacenter

Creating a Virtual Datacenter

API feature This feature is available in the API. See Virtual Datacenter Resource.

To create a new virtual datacenter, click the button and complete the form:

Creating Virtual Datacenter Networks

New Feature External networks were introduced in version 1.8.5

Abiquo offers three types of virtual datacenter networks:

• public networks with Internet addressable public IP addresses.
• external networks that are assigned to an enterprise and can be accessed by more than one virtual datacenter.
• private networks with private IP addresses that are restricted to a single virtual datacenter.

External and private networks can be made the default for a virtual datacenter. When you create a virtual datacenter, its default VLAN will be your enterprise's default network. This can be either the automatically created private VLAN, named "default_network", or an external VLAN, set as the default in Users view.

If you wish to override the default network, you will need to create a new custom private network to be the default; see below. After you create the virtual datacenter, you can change the default network; see Manage Networks.

Creating a Virtual Datacenter with a Custom Private Network

If you select the Custom option for the Private Network configuration, the form will expand and to show the following network configuration options:

After you have created a virtual datacenter, VLANs can be managed in the Network tab as explained in the Manage Networks section.

Allocation Limits Management

Enterprise Edition Functionality This feature is available in Abiquo Enterprise Edition

The allocation limits tab allows the cloud administrator to limit the amount of physical and virtual resources a virtual datacenter may consume. This is very useful in preventing common problems in cloud platforms, including resource over allocation, virtual datacenters allocating resources from other virtual datacenters and DoS attacks. Allocation limits also help system administrators to anticipate user needs and to forecast resource demands.

Hard and Soft Limits

• Hard Limit: The maximum amount of virtual resources (RAM, virtual CPU, local hard disk, external storage, VLANs and public IPs) that a virtual datacenter will be allowed to consume.
• Soft Limit: This limit is always lower than the hard limit and it is used to alert users. When a virtual datacenter reaches the soft limit, users will see a warning that they are reaching the resource allocation limits for their virtual datacenter.

To manage the virtual datacenter allocation limits click the allocation limits tab when creating your virtual datacenter and you will see the following panel:

Hard and Soft Limits Remember that soft limits must be always lower than hard limits. Limits equal to 0 means that there is no limit to resource usage.

After you complete the form, Abiquo will create the virtual datacenter and the associated VLAN and display it in the Virtual Datacenters View.

Viewing DHCP Information

The DHCP information for assigning IPs to the virtual machines of the virtual datacenter can be viewed by selecting the virtual datacenter, clicking the button and selecting the Show DHCP info option.

• In Community Edition you must copy this configuration manually to your DHCP server.
• In Enterprise Edition the DHCP Remote Service automatically configures DHCP.