Abiquo 5.1
Abiquo offers a single cloud console for your public clouds and private data centers. And it enables you to present your customers with a single cloud bill!
Abiquo has the building blocks for a customized cloud service, so you can use the features that best match your business goals.
The Abiquo cloud management platform consists of an Abiquo Server (providing central management) and a set of Remote Services for each datacenter and for public cloud regions.
The platform presents a number of services to the cloud consumers to provide cloud services, and to enable the use of integration and automation solutions on top of them:
The Server manages the platform and delivers service as defined by cloud administrators
The API provides access to the platform functionality, allowing integration or automation
The self-service Apps library provides VM templates and blueprints to run on the platform and use its resources
The UI allows cloud consumers to use the platform through the Abiquo Server
Dashboards, Reporting, Accounting, and Metering show how the platform is being used and enable Billing
Here is a basic functional map for private cloud.
As the basic functional map shows, Abiquo adds a thin unintrusive management layer to the existing cloud infrastructure and providers. There is no impact on any VMs that are already running. Abiquo doesn't do anything to virtual machines without user actions. Abiquo will update its own information when it checks and synchronizes but it doesn't delete anything. Abiquo doesn't power off or undeploy VMs. So if something has happened to your VM, you can check in the events view and you will usually see that someone else in the team has done something to your VM!
The Cloud Admins can add the physical and virtual infrastructure to Abiquo in a controlled way on their own timescales.
Abiquo does more than just cloud provisioning!
In addition to the basic concepts, the following diagram shows some of the specialized feature sets that Abiquo can provide as part of a cloud service! For example, with Abiquo you can:
This section describes the platform from the administrator's point of view. On the Abiquo multi-cloud IaaS platform, Cloud Administrators manage resources, and give users controlled access to self-service resources. Cloud administrators register physical resources and public cloud services in the platform, then grant virtual resources to users. Administrators allow users to have self-service in the cloud, while Administrators remain in control of the physical resources and public cloud services.
Cloud administrators create enterprises, which are the basic cloud tenants, and tenant hierarchies. Administrators allocate resources to enterprises and use policy to control access to resources, including user roles and privileges. Cloud Administrators can automate management tasks and delegate them to resellers, for example.
Administrators create the Apps library, which contains VM templates and application blueprints. The Apps library is the key to self-service on the platform, enabling users to easily consume the cloud resources in the virtual datacenters. Administrators can share templates and blueprints using tenant access control lists. This enables you to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) on top of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). And you can allow tenant administrators to upload their own templates or create their own blueprints.
Administrators create virtual datacenters (VDCs) where users will consume their cloud resources. VDCs are logical groups of resources within a single Abiquo datacenter and virtualization backend, or public cloud provider. The Cloud Administrator can provide different service levels by using different technology stacks for different VDCs. Administrators can apply policies to VDCs using allocation limits (controlling compute, network and storage) or defining the users within an enterprise who can work with each VDC, and their level of access. For example, read only access in public cloud.
Administrators create pricing models. Administrators enter pricing information for billing that also enables them to offer pricing estimates to users.
This section describes the platform from the user's point of view. Abiquo users can log in to the user interface and easily consume virtual resources through their virtual datacenters. Users perform tasks such as the following.
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