Appliance Library View

Introduction to the Apps library

The Appliance Library (Apps library) enables cloud providers to offer users VM templates for self-service deployment.

To access the Apps library, click the disk stack Apps Library button on the main menu.

Privilege: Access Appliance Library view

For each datacenter or public cloud region, the platform displays the VM templates available to your enterprise.

Manage the Apps library using the API

API Feature

This feature is available in the API. For datacenters, see DatacenterRepositoriesResource. For datacenters and public cloud regions, see TemplateDefinitionsResource and TemplateDefinitionListsResource

Apps library concepts

Concept	Description
VM template	To deploy a VM, the platform uses a VM template and a hardware specification. A VM template consists of a VM template definition and VM template disk files, which include the system disk and any auxiliary disks.
VM template definition	The VM template definition includes information about the disks, the hardware, and product (additional metadata: name, description, icon, category, installed software). When you load a VM template definition and disk files into the Apps library, the platform generates a VM template based on the information in the VM template definition. A VM template definition can only include one virtual system, but you can create systems with multiple VMs using virtual appliances within Abiquo. In a private cloud datacenter, you can create VM templates from a local OVA, or one or more disk files and definition (details or OVF).
Instance templates	Abiquo Instances are templates created from copies of VM disks. You can use instances just like any other template for creating new VMs. In a datacenter, an instance is linked to the original master template. The master template is marked with an M symbol in the top left-hand corner. An instance is marked with an S symbol in the top left-hand corner.
V2V conversion	In a private cloud datacenter, Virtual-to-Virtual Conversion (V2V) is a process that runs to convert a new template into the default format for each hypervisor in the platform. It runs when users download VM templates, create VM instances, or upload new templates. If a hypervisor supports more than one format, then templates that are not supported by the platform for this hypervisor will be converted to the default format. Other formats will not be converted. If there are no hypervisors present, it will convert templates into the default base formats of all hypervisors.
Owner enterprise	The enterprise in which a VM template was created
Standard template	In private cloud datacenters, a standard template has disks that will deploy to the hypervisor datastore
Persistent template	In private cloud datacenters, a persistent template has disks on external storage volumes

Pages related to Apps library

For a basic introduction to adding VM templates, see: Add Virtual Machine Templates to Abiquo
For full details of adding VM templates, see: Add VM Templates to the Apps Library
VM automation with cloud-init templates: Guest setup
Configuration pages
- VM repository folder
- In Modify a VM template, see Extended OVF Support and Template Definition and OVF Reference.