From Abiquo 0.7.0 it’s mandatory to install an application in the servers where the hypervisors VirtualBox, XEN or KVM is executed (Yes, VMware ESXi does not need these small applications). The reason why we now need it is because these hypervisor lacks of some functionality provided by VMware ESXi. So we cover these lacks with our own software. Our goal is to make the dream of Virtual to Virtual (V2V) coming true thanks to our platform. Want to deploy your ESXi virtual images in XEN, KVM or VirtualBox? Abicloud can help with its V2V capabilities.
Some users reported that this change could make harder to deploy a new cloud system. So, we decided in the maintenance release 0.7.1 to offer pre-configured images with the hypervisors and our applications configured ready to run. But we wanted to go one step further: the user should not need to configure the operating system, the drivers, users, permissions… it should be as easy as possible. Almost a bare-metal version.
We have been using a service from openSUSE called SUSE Studio. SUSE Studio is a web front-end to customize and build your own personal distribution in as many ways you could possibly think off. There are other similar services and applications that helps you make custom distribution but none of them are as extensive in customization options as SUSE studio or as easy.
With this service, we created what we called Cloud Node Images. A Cloud Node Image is raw disk image with all the libraries and software bundled in such a way that the set up of a Cloud Node is a very simple process almost without any intervention. Besides, the linux distribution detects the exisiting hardware the first time it boots and expands itself to fill the drive.
At this moment we have these hypervisors and architectures available:
- VirtualBox – openSUSE 11.1 JeOS x86 32 bits [download] [instructions]
- KVM – openSUSE 11.1 JeOS x86 32 bits [download] [instructions]
64bit versions and XEN support will come in future releases. But if you want to test drive our platform, probably this is the fastest way.
You can download it from our community site, in the section Cloud Node Images. We hope this will help to make things easier to anyone who wants to test our platform. If you have some ideas, please let us know!