Frequently Asked Questions

The following are some of the major features of the release:

• Unlimited Multi-Currency Pricing Models
• Opscode Chef Integration
• Jaspersoft Open Source Reporting Integration
• Extended Hypervisor, NetApp and Cisco UCS Support
• Fully Customizable Open Source End User Portal

It will be available in Q4 2011.

Abiquo can assign a price to any billable resource, including CPU, RAM, storage, network and image type. This capability will enable chargeback and billing capabilities. The pricing model is also supports multiple currencies.

When the pricing model is populated, the user is informed of the total cost prior to the virtual appliance being deployed. The user is either allowed to continue with the deployment as is or modify aspects of the virtual appliance to reduce the total cost. The usage of the virtual appliance is tracked and can be pushed (or pulled) by Abiquo to a central chargeback or billing application.

The pricing models can be accessed via the Abiquo user interface and API.

Opscode Chef is a configuration management system and library. With Chef, Abiquo users can write abstract definitions as source code to describe they want each part of their infrastructure to be built, and then apply those descriptions to individual virtual machines.

Chef saves you money by allowing your business to support larger, more complicated IT infrastructures with less manpower - just deploy the virtual machines, and let Chef take care of the rest. As you automate your infrastructure, you gain the immediate benefit of never having to go back in six months and repeat yourself. Plus, you won't have to do it all yourself - leverage the Opscode Chef community of experts who are sharing their recipes, collaborating on best practices, and helping each other to succeed.

Abiquo has integrated Chef into Abiquo Enterprise Edition to allow post deployment operations. During pre-deployment configuration and customization of the VM, a list of Chef roles and recipes can be selected. As the VM is deployed, these roles and recipes are downloaded and executed to automate the customization of the VM.

Yes, Abiquo supports both Hosted Chef and Private Chef (behind the firewall).

VMware vSphere 5, 4.1 and 4.0 are supported.

Abiquo supports any vSphere environment that uses the VMware DVS. As a result, Abiquo can provision VLANs when the VMs are deployed (as opposed to pre-provisioning of VLANs) and these VLAN automatically propagate to any ESX hosts attached to that DVS. This simplifies any VM mobility functions since the VLAN will migrate along with the VM.

Yes. The IP address of the vCenter Server can be added to Abiquo to allow synchronization between Abiquo and vSphere. In addition, to enable DVS functionality, vCenter Server is a required component.

There are three principal ways to utilize NetApp storage systems with Abiquo:

1. Hypervisor datastore: The NetApp array can be used as the backing for storage presented by any of six supported hypervisors. Typically, the virtual disks for Abiquo deployed virtual machines will reside here. When used in this capacity, Abiquo will support any storage protocol including iSCSI, Fibre Channel and NFS.
2. Image repository: The NetApp array can also be used as the central repository image templates used by Abiquo. The image repository is accessible via the NFS protocol.
3. Managed tiered storage pools: Abiquo will allow tiering of storage and self-storage consumption of these tiers of storage. This is enabled via the NetApp Data ONTAP integration native to Abiquo – there is no need to install any additional software as a result. This storage tiering and self-service storage is accessible via iSCSI.

Yes, all three storage use cases can be collapsed onto the same NetApp storage.

Yes, NetApp Multistore is supported.

Abiquo’s unique approach to private and hybrid clouds addresses the needs of the three core stakeholders and enables IT to deliver a cloud solution with IT control and governance, while enabling users with just-in-time access to the infrastructure they need. With Abiquo, the IT organization can pool existing globally distributed resources and then carve them out for end user consumption. Abiquo delivers these features and benefits:

1. Drive visibility and control for IT operations with centralized management across compute, storage and networking, on or off premise.
2. Enable role-based empowerment for application and development teams through a simple GUI, self-service portal to access the policy based infrastructure and image libraries they need in real time.
3. Enforce compliance and deliver efficiency for governance teams and the CFO as part of the requirements for true self-service, automated private cloud.

Abiquo Enterprise Edition allows IT Operations teams to centralize the management of compute, storage and networking, regardless of location. This capability affords IT teams with the visibility and control they need to offer cloud services. In addition to delivering the basics for cloud success, Abiquo offers the greatest flexibility and broadest supporting technology available in the market. By providing robust support for physical and virtual infrastructure, Abiquo customers are able to leverage existing infrastructure and progressively centralize management, versus a rip and replace implementation. Abiquo delivers these key benefits:

• Enterprise Infrastructure Optimized
• Simplified Virtual Infrastructure Operations
• Secure Orchestration and Governance
• Turnkey Self-Service Operation

The following are the core features:

1. Enterprise Infrastructure Optimized
1. Storage as a Service
2. Tiered Compute Resources
3. VMware vSphere Integration
4. Support for all major hypervisors
5. LDAP integration
6. Simplified Deployment on live running environments
2. Simplified Virtual Infrastructure Operations
1. Multi-tenancy
2. Global infrastructure management
3. Virtual to Virtual (V2V) conversion between all hypervisors ends vendor lock-in
4. Advanced networking capabilities
5. Role based access control
6. Hypervisor Agnostic High Availability
3. Secure Orchestration and Governance
1. Opscode Chef configuration management
2. Business Policies
3. Delegated control and Autonomous Virtual Enterprises
4. Resource limits
5. Pricing and Billing
6. Full-Featured Reporting Engine
4. Turnkey Self Service Operation
1. Service Catalog
2. vApp Canvas
3. Private-label branding
4. Appliance library

It’s both - and neither. Abiquo is used by Global 2000 enterprises to manage their private and hybrid cloud environments and service providers use Abiquo to provide public clouds and dedicated resources. Whether you want to work exclusively within your corporate firewall, totally outside it, or a mixture of both, is fine with Abiquo.

All the popular ones, including VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Xen, KVM and Virtual Box. Abiquo customers can run any or all simultaneously in the same environment. Abiquo was not built on the basis of a single hypervisor, so functionality is not in any way limited to a specific hypervisor type.

Commercial hypervisor installations are generally not interoperable, effectively making enterprises “locked-in” to them because existing machines would have to be completely re-built from scratch in order to change. Abiquo solves this problem by allowing fully automatic conversion of VMs between hypervisor types. Just drag and drop in the user interface and the job is done for you.

Abiquo has a central control application which runs on commodity hardware – usually just a single server, though in large installations the database and storage servers can be hosted on separate devices.

The Abiquo server requires a minimum of 2GB RAM and a 20GB disk to operate and will run on any x86-based hardware.

Abiquo is a complete solution, requiring only a hypervisor(s) to create and manage an enterprise cloud.

While it depends on the complexity of your environment, a simple install can be completed in under an hour.

No, Abiquo will install on a live running environment and does not require VMs to be rebuilt or even re-booted. It will take a physical and virtual inventory of each physical machine automatically, which can be progressively brought under Abiquo management. Abiquo will also install in a greenfield environment.

No, Abiquo can be used by organizations of all sizes and types. Abiquo customers include: private enterprises, government agencies, educational institutions, and a range of service providers.

Abiquo’s Role Based Access Control allows customers to define unlimited roles in Abiquo and provide granular control of user permissions by selecting from over 40 system level privileges. This functionality allows Abiquo administrators to create any number of custom roles beyond the default roles in Abiquo.

Abiquo allows centralized authentication of users using any LDAP compatible directory. In addition, users can be fully managed through LDAP, with accounts optionally auto-created in Abiquo. When Abiquo is running in LDAP mode, user credentials from the Abiquo logon page is authenticated against a LDAP database, so Abiquo users can be seamlessly integrated into an existing LDAP infrastructure. The following directories are tested and supported:

• Active Directory on Windows 2003, Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2
• ApacheDS
• OpenLDAP 2.4

Abiquo automatically detects host failure and determines which host (of similar hypervisor type) in the rack the VM(s) will restart on. The same Abiquo algorithm used for VM placement/deployment is used when there is VM restart event, so business policy, etc is still intact. This allows a MSP or Enterprise deploying multi-hypervisor environments to have a consistent and predictable HA mechanism.

It’s recommended that you choose to use one or the other. Abiquo HA is positioned as a solution for MSP or Enterprise deploying multi-hypervisor environments to have a consistent and predictable HA mechanism. Abiquo will continue to support environments when the hypervisor’s HA solution is enabled instead of Abiquo HA.

No. Abiquo HA will restart the VM on the same type of hypervisor in the same rack.

Abiquo Enterprise Edition 2.0 has extended the integration to the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) Manager. In addition to allowing cloud administrators to easily discover, add and manage new or existing Cisco UCS deployments into a shared cloud infrastructure pool, Abiquo now supports assignment of service profiles and service profile templates.

A service profile is a software definition of a server and its LAN and SAN network connectivity, in other words, a service profile defines a single server and its storage and networking characteristics. Service profiles are stored in the Cisco UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects. When a service profile is deployed to a server, the UCS Manager (via Abiquo) will automatically configures the server, adapters, fabric extenders, and fabric interconnects to match the configuration specified in the service profile. This automation of device configuration reduces the number of manual steps required to configure servers, network interface cards (NICs), host bus adapters (HBAs), and LAN and SAN switches.

The integration is done using the full featured UCS Manager XML API. Since this is the native language of the Cisco UCS Manager, it provides Abiquo unrestricted access to implement value add features.

The integration supports all components of the Cisco UCS server portfolio. Abiquo’s testing has been done on the UCS platform emulator and the following physical components:

• Cisco UCS 6120XP 20-Port Fabric Interconnect
• Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis
• Cisco UCS B200 Blade Servers

Abiquo expects to extend the testing to include other components of the Cisco UCS portfolio as they become available.

Abiquo has integrated with JasperSoft to provide a full-featured reporting engine allowing highly formatted, customizable and exportable reports.

The following are sample reports available:

1. Resource Allocation by Enterprise: This report will show the consumption and cost by Enterprise, VDC, Vapp and Virtual Machine.
2. Resource Consumption and Cost: This report will show the consumption and cost by Enterprise, VDC, Vapp and Virtual Machine.
3. Datacenter resource planning: This report will show the detail resource Usage dashboard. The report will be broken down by Datacenter, by Enterprise, By virtual Datacenter
4. Virtual Machine Usage Report: This report will show the details of all deployed virtual machines sorted by Datacenter, By Host, By Enterprise, By VDC and by virtual appliance

Abiquo is providing a HTML based end user portal that provides a simplified experience to provision VMs. In addition, Abiquo will make this portal open source.

Some of the benefits are:

1. Provision VMs from any end point including mobile devices such as the Apple iPod/iPad.
2. Build a service catalog to enable preconfigured deployment of virtual appliance.
3. Enable an approval process so that virtual appliance request requires approval from Central IT prior to deployment.
4. Since the portal is open source, there is tremendous flexibility to customize the portal to suit any need.