Abiquo 5.4
Expanding multicloud benefits for your business
As with every Abiquo release, new version 5.4 brings the latest advances and enhancements for you to get the most out of your multicloud platform. Improve management of private and public cloud resources thanks to new outstanding and more simplified features and cost control tools. In addition, now you can enlarge your cloud management capabilities with Abiquo 5.4.1, which adds an extra group of enhancements to the major version.
Abiquo 5.4
Expanding multicloud benefits for your business
As with every Abiquo release, new version 5.4 brings the latest advances and enhancements for you to get the most out of your multicloud platform. Improve management of private and public cloud resources thanks to new outstanding and more simplified features and cost control tools. In addition, now you can enlarge your cloud management capabilities with Abiquo 5.4.1, which adds an extra group of enhancements to the major version.
Become more agile using your cloud resources and upgrade to the latest muticloud functionalities with Abiquo 5.4
New NSX-T integration for advanced networking
Abiquo supports NSX-T, a software-defined networking solution, to offer advanced networking functionalities with virtual data centers, private networks, NAT, firewalls and load balancers.
Now networks will be dynamically configured as Abiquo uses the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which adds flexibility and saves administrator efforts and resources.
This feature brings the ability to create virtual network resources with the NSX-T Policy API and supports load balancers using the NSX-T load balancer service.
Also, by creating a DHCP server and an east-west firewall policy, each VDC group allows traffic between private networks within the VDC.
Administrators can capture VMs using NSX-T networking into virtual datacenters that already have the same private networks as the VMs.
Additionally, Abiquo 5.4.1 supports NSX-T with a single new plugin for advanced cloud networking. With NSX-T Abiquo offers similar functionality to the NSX-V plugin including virtual datacenters, private networks, NAT, firewalls, load balancers, and bandwidth limits. VMware does not offer an upgrade path from NSX-V to NSX-T and this plugin is also for use with new resources. Abiquo uses the NSX-T Policy mode and it does not modify the Fabric. Abiquo supports N-VDS and introduces support for VDS in version 5.4.1.
Abiquo’s NSX-T plugin is independent of the customer’s configuration which means that you won’t have to spend extra admin time to adjust any aspect of your network configuration.
Check the configuration details and properties in the wiki link below.
New NSX-T integration for advanced networking
Abiquo supports NSX-T, a software-defined networking solution, to offer advanced networking functionalities with virtual data centers, private networks, NAT, firewalls and load balancers.
Now networks will be dynamically configured as Abiquo uses the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which adds flexibility and saves administrator efforts and resources.
This feature brings the ability to create virtual network resources with the NSX-T Policy API and supports load balancers using the NSX-T load balancer service.
Also, by creating a DHCP server and an east-west firewall policy, each VDC group allows traffic between private networks within the VDC.
Administrators can capture VMs using NSX-T networking into virtual datacenters that already have the same private networks as the VMs.
Additionally, Abiquo 5.4.1 supports NSX-T with a single new plugin for advanced cloud networking. With NSX-T Abiquo offers similar functionality to the NSX-V plugin including: virtual datacenters, private networks, NAT, firewalls, load balancers, and bandwidth limits. VMware does not offer an upgrade path from NSX-V to NSX-T and this plugin is also for use with new resources. Abiquo uses the NSX-T Policy mode and it does not modify the Fabric. Abiquo supports N-VDS and introduces support for VDS in v5.4.1.
Abiquo’s NSX-T plugin is independent of the customer’s configuration which means that you won’t have to spend extra admin time to adjust any aspect of your network configuration.
You can check the configuration details and properties in the link below.
Expand your Multicloud capabilities with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Abiquo 5.4 introduces Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to enable your business to offer your clients the ability to add another public cloud provider in your hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Cost control and billing are fully covered through Abiquo since the platform can now access the OCI cost and usage data and display it on the Abiquo billing dashboards.
Abiquo’s first version of the OCI integration includes all the basic features: managing VMs, networks, including public subnets and IP addresses, storage volumes and VM monitoring.
Abiquo improves coverage of public cloud by extending Oracle support. Now, Abiquo 5.4.1 introduces new capabilities for the existing OCI integration, including OCI Flex Shapes (Abiquo dynamic hardware profiles) and OCI Freeform tags (Abiquo Multicloud tags).
Abiquo dynamic hardware profiles will give users the ability to change the CPU and RAM values without changing the complete hardware profile. This way it is easier to increase the specifications of a VM.
The support for Abiquo multicloud provider tags (Freeform tags in OCI) gives you the ability to apply these tags to the following entities in the provider: virtual datacenters, VMs, firewalls, and load balancers. You can apply local tags to all other entities. In future versions of Abiquo, you will be able to use multicloud tags with Abiquo multicloud tag policies.
Visit our wiki site to learn more about how this integration works.
Firewall policies bringing Google Cloud Platform integration a step further
Abiquo 5.4 improves the existing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) integration by adding new firewall policies. This feature will provide administrators the ability to onboard firewalls when they onboard global networks.
Users already could enjoy the fact that Abiquo automatically created a GCP firewall rule for each VM to enable users to connect. Now users can manage their own firewall policies and onboard existing GCP firewall rules.
Complete multicloud datastore tier limits for tenants
Abiquo 5.4 introduces complete multi-cloud storage limits per tenant. What does this mean?
In previous versions, users could create limits for private cloud datacenters and for tenants in multiple datacenters as well as group and limit usage of storage in datastore tiers in private clouds. Now, in addition, Abiquo automatically onboards and groups datastore tiers from your different public cloud regions and also enables you to set limits on any kind of storage tiers for your tenants.
This means that Abiquo gets the tiers automatically in public cloud and for private cloud, as previously, you can group them yourself. You can now control how much of each type of storage a cloud tenant uses. Thanks to this feature companies will be able to limit cloud storage sprawl and control cloud storage costs.
This feature has its own dashboard widget which is called “Abstract datastore tiers” but as always, you can rename it for your users. It also combines very well with Abiquo’s dashboard widget for “Idle volumes” which warns users about volumes that are not connected to any VMs.
Changes to scopes for tenant hierarchies
Abiquo 5.4 introduces some changes to scopes in order to simplify tenant hierarchies.
Creating and assigning scopes becomes easier in Abiquo 5.4, as when you assign a default scope to an enterprise, Abiquo will automatically add this enterprise to the scope.
Edit disk size and tier in VM templates and VMs
Abiquo 5.4 gives users more control over disk sizes and storage service levels (tiers).
Now you can gain more control over your public cloud accounts, being able to edit the storage tier and size of VM template disks, change the size of hard disks before and after you launch the instance in the cloud provider, modify VM hard disks and VM volumes in public cloud.
New backup plugin to support Rubrik
Abiquo 5.4.1 increases the choice of backup integrations, adding Rubrik to the previous plugin list (Veeam and Networker) which gives customers more choice for BaaS.
From now on, Abiquo users will extend their choices of security, data backup and recovery.
Rubrik provides reliable replication, maintaining compliance standards, having zero impact on performance and, above all, helps cost control management.
Abiquo backups let you offer Backup as a Service (BaaS), which will allow your customers to manage their own backups, saving a lot of time, effort and money.
A wider assortment of plugins to connect that will increase the ease of management of your cloud resources!
Update the MAC addresses of private IPs
Abiquo 5.4.1 allows administrators to update the MAC address in Abiquo, after assigning a static MAC address on vCenter, although this feature will not update the MAC address in the Abiquo DHCP lease.
To update a MAC address admins will have to go to the Private networks screen and, either in the Infrastructure view or in the Virtual datacenters view, select the IP address and edit it to set the same MAC address as in vCenter.
When the MAC gets modified, the platform will create an event for the entity “PRIVATE IP” with the action code “MODIFY_MAC “.
Use Guest setup to inject IP addresses without DHCP
Abiquo enables users to use VMware hypervisor tools on Linux and Windows systems to configure VMs, including adding an IP address with DHCP. Abiquo 5.4.1 you can also configure IP addresses when you are not using any DHCP services.
The platform will add IP addresses to the VMs when you first deploy them, and if you reconfigure the VM to add a new NIC, then the platform will also use the hypervisor tools to update the IP address.
For security reasons, when the user reconfigures a VM to add a NIC, you should use a configuration where Abiquo will wait for the user to supply the administrator password. If the password is not correct, Abiquo will roll back the changes to the VM.
It is essential that you correctly configure your VM templates to run VMware guest tools.