vCloud Director

Supported Versions

Abiquo supports vCloud API version 9.0. Abiquo supports vCloud Director as a private or public cloud provider using the public cloud interface. vCD is a self-contained cloud with an endpoint for access and an API to manage it, so although vCD can be a private or public cloud, it best fits the public cloud model in Abiquo. Abiquo works with vCloud organizations as Abiquo public cloud regions.

Adding vCloud Director to Abiquo

For properties to configure for vCloud Director, see Abiquo Configuration Properties#vcd

When creating a public cloud region choose one of the following configurations:

Enter administrator credentials (user@System) to retrieve a region (provider VDC) OR
Enter organization administrator credentials (user@orgName) to retrieve the organization (org VDC), in which case the region will be exclusive to the organization.

To allow an enterprise to work in a region:

Edit the enterprise and
1. Go to Allowed datacenters and add the region
2. Go to Credentials and select vCloud Director and enter the Organization administrator identity and credential.

When the system administrator adds a new organization in vCloud, which will create a new organization VDC, then the system administrator should go to Infrastructure → Public and click the + button and select Create a public cloud region to list the available regions and add metadata for this model to the organization virtual datacenter.

General features

The platform offers these vCloud Director and Abiquo features in the private cloud integration using vCloud API.

vCloud Director Feature	Support	Comments
Configure and remove VMs		Using CPU and RAM values or Abiquo hardware profiles.
Reconfigure VMs		For VMs deployed in vCloud, you can always change the configuration when the VM is powered off.
Hot reconfigure VMs		If your OS supports hot-reconfigure and if it is enabled for your VM template on vCloud. Edit the template and select the hot-reconfigure option. You can use this feature without redeploying your VMs. The platform supports hot-reconfigure of CPU, RAM, SCSI disks, and NICs.
Power on VM
Power off VM
Reset VM
Pause and resume VM
Take a VM snapshot
Storage		The platform supports auxiliary hard disks for vCloud Director Users can add and remove hard disks (and hot reconfigure SCSI disks) Users cannot change the boot sequence or the bus/unit number vCloud Director does not support storage reconfigure for organization virtual datacenters that use fast provisioning
Remote access		Click on the Abiquo eye icon to open a remote console
Synchronize networks		Synchronize private and external networks. External networks outside the OrgVDC but connected to the Edge are external networks in the platform, for use by load balancers but not VM vNICs External networks outside the OrgVDC with a direct connection to OrgVDC as OrgVDCNetwork are external networks Org networks inside the Org VDC and routed through the Edge are external networks Isolated Org networks are external networks, for use by VM vNICs but not load balancers vApp networks are private networks The platform displays onboarded external networks in virtual datacenters; administrators cannot manage them in the platform infrastructure. The platform does not onboard or manage static routes or NAT. For private networks, the property "vcd.parentnetwork" will determine if there is a connection to allow outgoing traffic. This can be set for the platform and the enterprise. The value can be any existing orgNetwork name or "none" for isolated private networks. The default value is "edge-uplink", which uses the external network connected to the orgVdc Edge gateway. In vCloud when you create an external network that can support load balancers (direct or routed), you must create a static IP pool with the number of IP addresses to reserve for load balancers. The platform uses a configuration property to set the number of addresses to reserve for load balancers. If you do not create the static IP pool, the platform's onboarding process will ignore the network. The number of static IPs reserved for load balancers is also a limit on the number of load balancers that users can create in a network.
Synchronize VDCs		Synchronize vCD regions and VDCs. When you remove a virtual datacenter from vCloud and it still exists in platform, when synchronizing, an error is displayed that the resource no longer exists. The user can then manually delete the VDC from the platform.
Synchronize firewall policies		Synchronize Edge firewalls created in vCloud Director as classic firewalls at OrgVDC/public cloud region level. Do not create security groups for VMs because they are not supported in the platform environment.
Use Chef	-
Use Chef attributes	-
VM bootstrap scripts		Using cloud-init, see Guest setup
VM variables		Using cloud-init, see Guest setup
Load balancing		Create load balancers in the platform. Use public addresses that are on an available external network in vCD Known issue: Cannot create load balancing rules between vCD vApps, which are VDCs in the platform
Import and synchronize VMs		When you onboard a VM, the platform creates a placeholder template. In the Apps library, this template will be marked as Unavailable because it cannot be used to create a VM. Before you undeploy the VM you MUST create an Instance template, which will clone the VM disks. Otherwise, you will not be able to recreate the VM. When you undeploy an onboarded VM, the platform will destroy the VM and the placeholder template. After you create an instance template, the platform will update the VM template in the Apps library to point to this template and put it in the Available state. The platform will correctly save VMs with multiple disks as templates in the vCloud registry, but they will appear to have a single disk. If you undeploy a VM with a saved instance template, when you deploy the VM again, the platform will use the saved instance template. Remember to check your VM configuration
VM monitoring and metrics		Abiquo retrieves the built-in metrics. You can also use Abiquo collectd plugin, which can be installed using the Abiquo Chef cookbook. See Collectd plugin documentation
Abiquo import VM template from private cloud datacenter	-	Abiquo uses vCD template repository and obtains the operating system type from the template. If the template has no vCPU and RAM values, the platform sets a default of 1 CPU and 1024 MB of RAM.
Abiquo autoscaling		Driven by action plans, triggered by schedules or alarms
Abiquo alarms and alerts
Abiquo action plans		Create vertical and horizontal auto-scaling
Abiquo hardware profiles		You can use Abiquo hardware profiles or CPU and RAM values
Abiquo VApp spec blueprints		Save configurations and share them with users in appropriate locations