Abiquo 5.1
To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the platform's control features include monitoring alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and autoscaling.
Control and scaling concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Metric | A built-in metric that is provided by a hypervisor or provider (e.g. CPU usage) or a custom metric that the user creates and populates using API calls |
| Alarm | An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem. See Manage cloud alarms and Infrastructure Alarms |
| Alert | An alert enables you to configure notifications or actions from alarms. Alerts are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Alerts can trigger action plans. |
| Action plan | A sequence of actions to perform on entities on the platform, such as VMs or scaling groups. An action plan is run by a trigger. |
| Trigger | A trigger is an alert or a schedule that will run the action plan, for example, during times of increased demand. |
| Scaling group | For horizontal autoscaling, create a scaling group for a VM with rules to define how the platform should scale it out. You can then include scaling operations in an action plan. |
| Vertical scaling | Vertical scaling means scaling up, adding more resources to an existing VM, for example, boosting your CPU and or RAM capacity. |
| Horizontal scaling | Horizontal scaling means scaling out, deploying more VMs when you need more resources. |
Create alerts to notify users and trigger automation
The platform's Alerts feature enables you to track and act upon changes in your cloud environment. To configure Alerts do these steps:
- Go to Virtual datacenters → Virtual Appliances → Virtual machines.
- Create and configure your VMs. See Manage Virtual Machines
- Remember to go to Monitoring and fetch metrics. See VM monitoring and metrics.
- You can also create custom metrics using the API. See Custom Metrics Resources.
- Remember to go to Monitoring and fetch metrics. See VM monitoring and metrics.
- Go to Virtual Appliances → Monitoring and check that the platform is retrieving metrics. You may have to wait a few minutes
Create alarms for built-in metrics, scaling group metrics, and custom metrics as required
To create alarms, go to Virtual datacenters → select virtual datacenter → Alarms (see Manage cloud alarms) or Infrastructure → select datacenter → Alarms (see Infrastructure Alarms).
Select an entity, a metric, and a metric statistic and enter a threshold
Save the alarm
Create alerts to notify users
To create an alert:
- Go to Control → Alerts
- Click the + add button
Enter the alert details and assign alarms as described below
Click Save
Field
Description
Name
Name of the alert. The name can contain up to 128 characters
Description Describe the alert Muted Select this checkbox to disable action when the alert is activated Email List of email addresses to notify when the alert activates. Click Add email to save an address 
Click the + add button to assign alarms to the alert.
You must assign at least one alarm to be able to save the alert. Select an existing alarm, or create a new alarm, and assign it to the alert. Repeat for the required alarms
You can filter the Alarms list by Metric and also if the alarm is Active or not.
- You can also use alerts to trigger scaling, see Cloud bursting.
Configure automation with action plans
Cloud bursting is automatically deploying new resources in any part of your hybrid cloud environment to meet a peak in demand for resources. To prepare cloud bursting, create an application with metrics and create a matching application in another provider with an action plan that will scale when triggered by VM metrics or on schedule.
To configure cloud bursting do these steps:
- Create your application: deploy VMs with monitoring of critical values
- Create a matching appliance in another cloud. Deploy VMs with replication and use minimal hardware profiles
Create alarms for your critical values ofVM metrics, scaling group metrics, or custom metrics (see Custom Metrics Resources)
Go to Virtual datacenters → Alarms (see Manage cloud alarms)
Select an Entity (your VM or scaling group), a Metric, and a Metric statistic and enter a Threshold, then save the alarm
- Create alerts to notify users and to trigger scaling
- Go to Control → Alerts (see Manage Alerts)
- Create action plans for automation
- Go to Control → Action plans (see Manage Action Plans)
- Select a VM or scaling group
- Create Actions, for example, increase the hardware profile of a VM, or use scaling actions to add more VMs for your application.
- Add an Alert to trigger the action plan or create a Schedule to run it. If you use a schedule, the alarms and alerts are optional but recommended because they can help you control your cloud resources.
Pages related to control of VMs
Overview
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