Abiquo 5.1
Introduction to datastore tiers
In private cloud, to group hypervisor datastores and price them according to service levels, use datastore tiers.
- When you use tiers, administrators or cloud users can choose the service level for VM hard disks at the level of VM templates, virtual datacenters, and VMs.
- When you perform VM or storage moves outside of Abiquo, the platform will synchronize disks to their new datastore tiers.
- If you do not enable datastore tiers feature, all datastore disks will be created in the "Default Tier".
You can add datastores to a tier when you add a hypervisor to the platform, or from the Datastore tiers tab.
- You can only add datastores to datastore tiers if they do not have any managed VM disks on them or if none of the disks are in a tier.
Create datastore tiers
To create a datastore tier:
Privilege: Access infrastructure view and Private DCs, View datacenter details, Manage storage elements
- Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Datastore tiers
- Click the + Add button
- Enter the Name and Description
- Click Save
The platform will create the tier and allow access to all future enterprises that you create. For more details about the datastore tier settings, see the documentation on Abiquo Screens: GUI Create datastore tier General information and GUI Create datastore tier Enterprise access
Set access to tier service levels for datastores
When you create a datastore tier, by default the platform will allow access to the current enterprise only.
To allow access to different service levels you can set access for these levels:
- all enterprises
- enterprises in a datacenter
To modify enterprise access for ALL enterprises, Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Datastore tiers → create or edit datastore tier → Enterprise access
- Changes here will override the settings defined for an individual enterprise
- You cannot restrict the access of enterprises that have already created disks in the tier
To display a list of enterprises that currently have access to a datastore tier:
- Go to Infrastructure → Private → select Datacenter → Datastore tiers → edit datastore tier → Enterprise access
- Click Cancel or select Do not change enterprise access
Allow a tenant to use datastore tiers in a datacenter
To allow or prohibit access to a datastore tier for an individual enterprise
- Go to Users → edit enterprise → Datacenters → edit allowed datacenter → Datastore tiers
- Drag datastore tiers to the Allowed or Prohibited lists for this enterprise
- Click Accept to save the Enterprise datacenter resources
Troubleshooting
- You cannot restrict the access of enterprises that have already created disks in the tier
- Changes in Infrastructure view to the Datastore tiers on the Enterprise access tab will override these settings
Edit a datastore tier and add multiple datastores
To add multiple datastores to a tier:
- Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Datastore tiers
- Select a datastore tier
- Click the + add button in the Datastores pane on the right
From the popup list, select the Datastores to add
Click Add
Troubleshooting
- Generally, you cannot add datastores with managed VMs deployed on them to a datastore tier
- Exception: if a datastore with managed VMs deployed on it does not have a tier (e.g. as a result of datastore synchronization), you can assign it to a tier and the platform will automatically assign all disks to that tier
Add hypervisor datastores to service levels
You can also add datastore tiers to services levels when you create or edit a hypervisor. See Compute in Datacenters
Recommend datastore tiers for a VM template
The administrator can recommend datastore tiers for VM templates, as well as hardware profiles.
To recommend datastore tiers:
- Go to Apps library → Templates → edit a template
- Go to the Recommended tab, which lists the datastore tiers that are available in the datacenter.
- Optional: to display datastore tiers as Recommended for this template, select them from the list
- Optional: to restrict the user to the selected hardware profiles and datastore tiers, select the Enable only recommended DS Tiers checkbox.
When the user creates a VM, the platform will display the tiers that are available to the user's enterprise and recommended for the template. If you select the option to Enable only recommended DS Tiers, then the user can only select from the recommended tiers. See Create a virtual machine. If there are no tiers available, the user will not be able to create a VM.
Customization of tier display
To display recommended tiers only before deploy and then display all compatible tiers after deploy, configure the Abiquo UI with the client.vm.datastoretiers.useonlyrecommended property. See Configure Abiquo UI. This configuration is independent of the checkbox to Enable only recommended DS Tiers.
Set default storage service levels with datastore tiers
For a VM, if a user does not configure a datastore tier, the platform will select a default tier, if any is set.
The platform selects a default tier in the following priority order from highest to lowest:
- template disk
- virtual datacenter
- datacenter
- any of the allowed tiers
- null
A null tier means that datastore tiers are not in use.
When the user deploys, if the selected tier cannot be used, the deploy will fail with a scheduler error.
Set the default datastore tier for the datacenter
To set the default tier for the datacenter
- Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter → Datastore tiers
- Edit the tier and go to General information
- Select the Default option
- Click Save
Set the default datastore tier for a template disk
You can set the default service level when you add or edit an existing template disk.
Privilege: Manage VM templates from Apps library
To set the default datastore tier for a template disk
- Go to Apps library → Private → select datacenter
- Edit the template
- Go to Disks → edit disk
- Select a Datastore tier to set as the default
- Click Save
On the Disks tab, the platform displays the default tier for each disk.
Troubleshooting
- When you upload an ISO disk or a regular disk from the local filesystem to a new or existing template, you cannot set the datastore tier.
- If the default tier for the template disk is not set, Abiquo will use the default set in the virtual datacenter, and so on in the priority order.
Set the default datastore tier for the virtual datacenter
To set a default datastore tier for the virtual datacenter:
- Go to Virtual datacenters → Create or edit a virtual datacenter → Defaults
- Select an appropriate Default datastore tier
Troubleshooting
The virtual datacenter default has a higher priority than the datacenter default and a lower priority than a default datastore tier set in a VM template or in the VM itself.
Set the storage service level of a VM disk
To set the storage service level for a specific hard disk, assign a datastore tier.
Privilege: Manage virtual machine hard disks
When you create a VM from a standard VM template, the template may have a recommended tier or the disks may have a default datastore tier set by the administrator. The administrator may enforce the use of a recommended tier.
- To remove the current service level, click the x symbol beside the Datastore tier name
- To optionally set a new service level, select another tier from the list.
- If you do not select a tier, the platform will use the defaults
Troubleshooting
- If there is no default tier for the template disk, the platform will use a default that was set for the virtual datacenter or datacenter, or another available tier.
- You can only set or change the datastore tier before the platform creates the disk in the hypervisor
- If there is already a disk in an existing datastore tier, you can only select a compatible datastore tier
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