This page summarizes features for ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.0 release.

Contents 1 ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.0 1.1 Overview 1.2 Virtualization Features 1.3 Cloud Features 1.3.1 Seamless virtualized-to-cloud conversion 1.3.2 Third Party Cloud support 1.3.3 Virtual Data Centers 1.3.4 Multi-tenancy and Networking 1.4 Virtualized-to-cloud conversion 1.4.1 Preparing for Cloud conversion 1.4.1.1 Server Pools 1.4.1.2 Storage 1.4.1.3 Networking 1.4.1.4 Templates 1.4.2 The Cloud conversion 1.4.3 Using the Cloud 1.4.3.1 Provisioning Virtual Data Center 1.4.3.2 Managing the Cloud 1.5 Third party Clouds 1.5.1 Declaring Amazon Cloud 1.5.2 Declaring OpenStack Cloud 1.5.3 Declaring Eucalyptus Cloud 1.5.4 Using third party Cloud 1.5.4.1 Provisioning Virtual Data Center 1.5.4.2 Using Virtual Data Center 1.6 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.1 1.6.1 Managing Existing Virtual Machines from EC2/Eucalyptus/OpenStack 1.6.2 Eucalyptus 2.0.3 1.6.3 ConVirt Enterprise Enhancements 1.7 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.1.1 1.8 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.1.2 1.9 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.2 1.10 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.3

1.1 Overview

ConVirt Enterprise Cloud enables you to manage your virtualized data center and enterprise cloud built on Xen and KVM from a single console, ensuring that you always have full visibility into your environment and preventing infrastructure and management silos. With ConVirt Enterprise Cloud, you can quickly and seamlessly transition a part of your existing infrastructure into a cloud operations model and optionally integrate with Amazon EC2 when you need external capacity. At the same time, you retain the ability to promptly respond to the changing demands of your business by managing the mix of how your datacenter resources are allocated between traditional virtualized applications and the enterprise cloud.

Deployment Architecture

1.2 Virtualization Features

Important Note Before moving to Cloud Features, it is important to understand that ConVirt Enterprise Cloud product includes all features of ConVirt Enterprise. ConVirt Enterprise has comprehensive features around managing heterogeneous virtualization platforms. To learn more, please visit ConVirt Enterprise Documentation

1.3 Cloud Features

1.3.1 Seamless virtualized-to-cloud conversion

Setting up a private cloud is easier with ConVirt Enterprise Cloud. In fact, if you already have virtualization deployed in your data center, you have all the technology you need to run a private cloud. With a few simple clicks you can designate which parts of your existing infrastructure (server pools, networks, storage, and templates) should be used for the cloud deployment and ConVirt Enterprise Coud will take care of everything else!

1.3.2 Third Party Cloud support

Public clouds provide a convenient way to quickly add capacity. However, that extra capacity often comes with extra management overhead, since you now need to track two separate deployments using different tools. ConVirt Enterprise Cloud enables you to integrate your Amazon EC2 account into your ConVirt console. Then, from within ConVirt, you can provision new virtual datacenters, manage virtual machines, configure security groups, and much more. This enables you to get a centralized view of your cloud resources and clients, irrespective of whether they are hosted in your data center or remotely.

In addition to Amazon EC2, ConVirt can also manage local cloud deployments of OpenStack and Eucalyptus using the EC2 compatible APIs. This way both public and private cloud deployments can be managed via a single ConVirt Console.

1.3.3 Virtual Data Centers

Virtual Data Centers enable you to provision new cloud clients within seconds.

• Resource limiting

ConVirt Enterprise Cloud enables you to limit the compute, storage, and network resources that your cloud clients can use, ensuring that they do not go above the allocated quota. Clients can continuously monitor their resource consumption via the user console, making sure that they are not surprised when they run out of resources.

• Delegated control

ConVirt Enterprise Cloud gives you full flexibility in choosing the extent of control you want to delegate to your clients. Whether you choose to pre-configure everything and give the client a view-only screen, or dedicate computing resources and let the client create, provision, and manage custom applications, ConVirt Enterprise Cloud has you covered.

• Highly-interactive user console

Each client gets access to ConVirt’s highly interactive web-based user interface, where they can manage their virtual machines, templates, networks, and quota without having any visibility into the underlying physical infrastructure.

1.3.4 Multi-tenancy and Networking

ConVirt Enterprise Cloud delivers fine-grained, role-based access control, enabling you to share your infrastructure resources among multiple clients while ensuring full isolation.

• Network isolation

By default, each client is assigned a separate VLAN in order to ensure full network isolation. Additionally, you can choose to allow clients to create a limited number of their own private networks.

• Access to existing corporate networks

In cases where network isolation is not required, ConVirt Enterprise Cloud enables you to grant clients access to existing corporate networks.

• Public IP Management

ConVirt Enterprise Cloud enables clients to optionally make their virtual machines accessible over the Internet by assigning a public IP address. You define a Public IP pool and assign Public IP quotas to Virtual Data Centers. Clients can then request a Public IP, assign it to a virtual machine, and release it back into the Public IP pool.

1.4 Virtualized-to-cloud conversion

Virtualized-to-cloud conversion involves preparing and selecting resources that would host the cloud. In ConVirt this is represented by IaaS ( Infrastructure as a Service ) entity. In the following section, we will go through this process in more detail.

1.4.1 Preparing for Cloud conversion

This section outlines the resources required for creating a cloud. If you are existing ConVirt user, then you will already have most of these things in place. You will have to deal with only a subset of these which are unique to cloud operations. Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to give this section a read.

1.4.1.1 Server Pools

In ConVirt, the compute resources are Servers running Xen/KVM/VMWare/Hyper-v virtualization. These are organized in Server Pools. In order to provide compute capacity for the cloud, you can select one or more server pools. The Virtual machines would be created on servers within this server pools.

Tip : If you are not familiar with Servers and Server Pools, please refer to ConVirt Enterprise Documentation .

For correct operations the server pools selected must meet following requisites.

• Consistent Storage : The server pools should at least have one shared storage associated with them.
• Consistent Networking : All servers within the server pools should be consistent in their network connectivity. for e.g. all servers in the selected pools has eth0/br0 as management interface and eth1 for creating VLAN interface.
• High Availability : The high availability should be enabled for the server pool containing hosts. This is not a requirement however, where an external node is selected as Network Service Node.

1.4.1.2 Storage

The virtual machines disks would be created from the Storage defined and associated with the Server Pool. The storage should be attached with all server pools selected.

• example : In this example, we will create a NFS storage and associate with Server Pools.

NFS Storage	Associate with Pool(s)

1.4.1.3 Networking

• VLAN enabled infrastructure : You should have managed servers collected to a VLAN enabled switch, which is configured to carry VLAN tags on all ports (trunked). This is required as ConVirt creates a private network on separate VLAN.

• Defined networks : Already defined networks can be made available to the Cloud. This greatly simplify the cases where certain Virtual Machines need to be created on one of these networks. For this, the network should be defined and attached to all the server pools selected.
  • example :

Corporate Network	Attach to Server Pool(s) one by one

• VLAN ID Pool : ConVirt creates private virtual networks for isolation. One such network is typically created, each time a new cloud client/Virtual Data Center is provisioned. More over ConVirt has capability to allow the user to create its own private networks. ConVirt requires a VLAN id when such private network is to be created. For convenience, a VLAN ID Pool needs to be declared. The declaration of such pool has two components, the range of VLAN ids itself and IP Detals for each private network. ConVirt allows you to pick a network (in CIDR form) and subdivides it in to IP subnets, one for each vlan id.
  • example :

Create VLAN ID Pool	Associate with Server Pool(s)'

• Public IP Pool : The virtual machines are typically created on a network that is private and are not accessible other than from other virtual machines on the same network withing a given Virtual Data Center. In order for these virtual machines to be accessible from the internet or a designated network, a set of external facing IP addresses are required. ConVirt allows creating a Public IP Pool to specify these addresses. One such pool can be specified while performing virtualized-to-cloud conversion. The Cloud clients will be able to reserve IP address and associate it with a Virtual Machine, to make it accessible from a designated public network (typically internet).
  • example :

Create Public IP Pool

• Network Service : The above mentioned networking features are handled by Network Service within ConVirt. At least one host should be designated to run the Network Service. The Network Service host is typically connected to the following networks:
  • Management Network : This is the network ConVirt uses to configure/manage the Network Service
  • Private VLAN Network : This is the network that is partitioned for running virtual machines owned by different tenants/VDCs using VLAN
  • Public Network : This is a public/internet facing network. ConVirt will use the interface identified for this network for making virtual machines available on the public network.

ConVirt provides following two options for selecting host for running Network Service

• Existing Managed Server : An existing managed server can be used as a network service host. While using this option, a primary and secondary network service host can be specified. When High availability feature is enabled for this server pool. ConVirt will switch over the networking service functions from primary node to the secondary node (and vice-a-versa).

Networking Service Host

• External Host : ConVirt also allows an external host designated as Network Service host. This host needs to be prepared in a similar fashion as "Managed Server" (including Xen or KVM virtualization platform). While running convirt-tool on this host, use --skip_bridge option as we do not need to create bridges on all interfaces. When this option is used, traditional Linux HA is recommended for the Network Service host.

Networking Service Host

1.4.1.4 Templates

An integral part of creating a cloud is to have a set of templates. You can use an existing template group or create a new one that holds the cloud specific templates. An important thing to note is that the storage used by the virtual machine is dictated by the template. You are required to keep the template and the storage associated with server pools consistent.

• example :

Template General Settings	Template Disk Settings and size

Template Disks ISO	Template Network Settings

1.4.2 The Cloud conversion

To convert the virtualized infrastructure to a Cloud, an IaaS entity needs to be defined in ConVirt. We can do this using just a few clicks. While creating an IaaS, we will be selecting the following resources required to host a cloud.

• Server Pools, that provided compute capacity
• Network resources like Defined networks, VLAN ID Pool, Public IP Pools and Network service hosts.
• Templates used for provisioning the Virtual Machines in the cloud

Lets go through a step by step flow to create one such IaaS.

Select the IaaS node in the navigator and use "Add IaaS" menu item.

Select "ConVirt" to create an IaaS from local infrastructure.

• General Page : Provide a Name of the IaaS that you want to create here.

Create IaaS From local infrastructure : General

• Server Pools: Select the server pools that would be hosting Virtual Machines from the cloud users. The server pools need to be consistent in storage and network configurations. For more details please refer to the earlier section of Preparing for Virtualized-to-cloud conversion.

Create IaaS From local infrastructure : Server pools

• Networks: Here select the corporate networks that you want to make accessible to the cloud users. Only networks associated with all selected server pools would be shown here. Select the VLAN ID Pool that would be used to create private networks while creating cloud clients or Virtual Data Centers. Also select the public IP pool that would be used to make the virtual machines accessible from outside network/internet.

Create IaaS From local infrastructure : Networks

• Network Service: Here you select the server that would be used to host the network service. You can select a Primary and a Secondary server from the server pool Or specify an external host accessible via ssh to host the network service.

Create IaaS From local infrastructure : Network Service

• IaaS Dashboard: Once you have successfully created the IaaS, you will see a new node appear under the IaaS node in the navigator. On clicking it you will see the dashboard for the IaaS, It shows a summary and the resource usage in terms of the their allocation and use. This is extremely useful view to manage the cloud. It also has breakdown of resource allocation done on a per Virtual Data Center/cloud client bases. The Configuration tab shows details about the resources associated with this IaaS.

IaaS Overview

IaaS Configuration

1.4.3 Using the Cloud

Once the Cloud is created, you can start provisioning clients. The clients gets to use the cloud capacity without knowing any details about physical infrastructure. In ConVirt, these clients are represented as Virtual Data Centers. While provisioning a new Virtual Data Center or VDC, you specify the resources that will be made available to it as well as the quota for each such resource.

ConVirt typically also creates a private network for each Virtual Data Center. Thus providing isolation across various clients.

Existing ConVirt users can be given access to the newly provisioned VDC or you can create new users and give them appropriate access. ConVirt comes with two Cloud roles, Operator and User. The Operator has access to all operations within a VDC, while the User role is given only do Start,Stop and Connect to existing Virtual Machines.

1.4.3.1 Provisioning Virtual Data Center

In this section, we will go step by step in Provisioning a new Virtual Data Center from 'MyCloud' IaaS that we created as a result of "virtualized-to-cloud" conversion.

• Select IaaS : To initiate the flow, select the Virtual Data Centers node in the navigator and select "Provision Virtual Data Center" option. This will prompt you with a selection of available IaaS. Select the MyCloud that we just created. This will bring you to a new wizard where you can specify details about the new Virtual Data Center.

Provision VDC : Select IaaS

• General : Provide Name and Description of the new Virtual data center here.

Provision VDC : General

• Templates : Select from among the available templates.

Provision VDC : Templates

• Network : Select the networking options. Here you can control if the VDC users will be able to create their own networks or not. Also, you can select the defined networks that this VDC will have access to.

Provision VDC : Network

• Users : Here you can use the Add flow to add an existing user or New to create a new user. In either case, select the role they are going to have.

Provision VDC : Users	Create New User

• Save : Thats it, on pressing save, a task would be submitted to create a new virtual data center. Depending on a selection, it will also create required networks and other setup.

1.4.3.2 Managing the Cloud

Now once the Virtual Data Center is created, the users having access to it will see it in their navigator.

• Operations :

A user with Operator role on the Virtual Data Center will be able to do following operations.

• Create Virtual Machine
• Create networks (if allowed at the time of VDC creation)
• Start, Stop and Connect to Virtual Machines
• Delete/Destroy Virtual Machines
• Public IP Management
  • Ability to reserve a Public IP
  • Associate a reserved public IP to a Virtual Machine

While a user having only "User" role, is limited to the following operations.

• Create Virtual Machine
• Start, Stop and Connect to Virtual Machines

• VDC Dashboard : VDC Dashboard gives useful information about a particular VDC. The overview page highlights the Quota usage and Virtual Machines consuming high resources. The Virtual Machines tab presents a list view of all Virtual Machines while the Networking Tab gives information about Defined Networks, Private Networks and Public IP details in VDC.

VDC Overview

VDC Networking

VDC Shared Templates

• Provision Virtual Machine

To provision a new virtual machine, select the Virtual Machines folder and click on the "Provision Virtual Machine" context menu.

• General : Name the Virtual Machine and select the template. Once template is selected, the memory and vcpus can be changed.

Provision VM : General

• Network : Select the networks to which the VM would be connected. You can also decide if this Virtual Machine would be accessible via a public ip or not.

Provision VM : Network

• Storage : The storage pane gives you read only view in to the Virtual Machine disks.

Provision VM : Storage

• Result : After the provisioning task concludes, a new VM is shown in the navigator and details in the Virtual Machines tab.

Provision VM : Result

• Public IP Management: As a part of VDC operations, the operator can request public ips within his quota limits. Once the Public IP is obtained, it can be associated/attached to a virtual machine. Use the Manage Public IP menu items to get to the Public IP Management screen and request a new public IP.

Request a new Public IP

Once the Public IP is obtained, it can be associated/attached with a virtual machine within this virtual data center.

Attach Public IP to a Virtual Machine

Once the attach is successful, the screen would like follows.

Manage Public IP list.

• Manage Networks: As a part of VDC operations, the operator can choose to create new private networks limited by the quota. This allows the operator to have separation within a VDC.

To initiate, select the VDC and choose the Manage Networks from the right context menu, name the network and description and press save. This will create a new network and details will be presented in the manage network list pane.

Manage Networks : Create

Manage Networks

1.5 Third party Clouds

ConVirt Enterprise Cloud enables you to integrate your third party clouds into your ConVirt console. Then, from within ConVirt, you can provision new virtual datacenters, manage virtual machines, configure security groups, and much more.

ConVirt can manage Amazon EC2, OpenStack and Eucalyptus clouds using standard EC2 APIs. Managing these platforms via ConVirt has the following advantages.

• Centralized View of virtualized infrastructure, private and public clouds.
• Consistent access control across virtualization infrastructure as well as to third party clouds.
• Limit access to subset of Regions, Templates etc provided by Cloud.
• Provide resource quota management for Virtual Machines, Storage, Public IPs etc.

NOTE Currently ConVirt does not support Importing existing Virtual Machines in from third party clouds, this will be added very soon.

1.5.1 Declaring Amazon Cloud

This section describes how to declare an Amazon Cloud in ConVirt.

Click on the IaaS node in the navigator, and then select "Add IaaS", Select the Amazon EC2 type when prompted with selection dialog box.

This will bring up a dialog that will prompt you to enter name, description and Access information. ConVirt needs the Access information to connect to the Cloud Provider and learn about Regions, Availability Zones, Instance Types and Templates available for provisioning. Specify the information requested and click Connect.

Add Amazon IaaS: General

Once successfully connected you can go to the Regions and Instance Types pages of the wizard to specify individual items that will be part of the Cloud Provider. For example, you may want to restrict everyone using the cloud provider to use us-west and us-east regions only. On the Regions page, you can also select the subset of templates that would be available to the users. This is done by clicking the template + button for each region.

Add Amazon IaaS : Regions

Add Amazon IaaS : Templates

Add Amazon IaaS : Instance Types

1.5.2 Declaring OpenStack Cloud

Declaring OpenStack Cloud is very similar to the Amazon Cloud. Please refer to the earlier section for more details. The only difference is that you will need to provide server information for OpenStack API server.

Add OpenStack IaaS

1.5.3 Declaring Eucalyptus Cloud

Declaring Eucalyptus Cloud is very similar to the Amazon Cloud. Please refer to the earlier section for more details. The only difference is that you will need to provide server information for Cloud Controller.

Add Eucalyptus IaaS

1.5.4 Using third party Cloud

Once the Cloud is created, you can start provisioning clients. The clients gets to use the cloud capacity without knowing any details about physical infrastructure. In ConVirt, these clients are represented as Virtual Data Centers. While provisioning a new Virtual Data Center or VDC, you specify the resources that will be made available to it as well as the quota for each such resource.

Existing ConVirt users can be given access to the newly provisioned VDC or you can create new users and give them appropriate access. ConVirt comes with two Cloud roles, Operator and User. The Operator has access to all operations within a VDC, while the User role is given only do Start,Stop and Connect to existing Virtual Machines.

1.5.4.1 Provisioning Virtual Data Center

Provisioning Virtual Data Center involves selecting an IaaS and subset of facilities provided by that particular IaaS. To provision a new Virtual Data Center, select the Virtual Data Centers node in the navigator and use "Provision Virtual Data Center" menu. Select the IaaS when prompted. The following sections shows step by step screen shots to Provision a new virtual data center.

Provision Virtual Data Center : General

Provision Virtual Data Center : Regions

Provision Virtual Data Center : Select Existing Virtual Machines

Provision Virtual Data Center : Templates

Provision Virtual Data Center : Instance Types

Provision Virtual Data Center : Instance Types

Provision Virtual Data Center : Users

1.5.4.2 Using Virtual Data Center

Now once the Virtual Data Center is created, the users having access to it will see it in their navigator.

• Operations :

A user with Operator role on the Virtual Data Center will be able to do following operations.

• Create Virtual Machine
• Start, Stop and Connect to Virtual Machines
• Delete/Destroy Virtual Machines
• Public IP Management
  • Ability to reserve a Public IP
  • Associate a reserved public IP to a Virtual Machine
• Storage Management
• Private Key Pair Management
• Security Group Management

While a user having only "User" role, is limited to the following operations.

• Create Virtual Machine
• Start, Stop and Connect to Virtual Machines

• VDC Dashboard : VDC Dashboard gives useful information about a particular VDC. The overview page highlights the Quota usage and Virtual Machines consuming high resources. The Virtual Machines tab presents a list view of all Virtual Machines while the Configuration Tab gives information about Key Pairs, Security Groups,Public IP in VDC.

EC2 VDC Dashboard : Track usage against Quota

EC2 VDC Dashboard : Configuration

• Provision Virtual Machine

To provision a new virtual machine, select the Virtual Machines folder and click on the "Provision Virtual Machine" context menu.

• General : Name the Virtual Machine, Select Region and Availability Zone, and then select the template. You can optionally specify kernels and Ramdisks in the Advanced Section. Since 3.4.2, ConVirt supports Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and you will select the VPC in which you want to provision the virtual machine.

Provision VM : General

• Network : Select Security Group, Key Pair and decide if this Virtual Machine would be accessible via a public ip or not. Note, you can create new security group, key pair or request a new public IP from the same screen without leaving the provisioning flow.

If the virtual machines is being provisioned in to a VPC, you will see a drop down of subnets that you want to provision the virtual machine into.

Provision VM : Network

On clicking save, a new Provision Virtual Machine task would be submitted. On completion, newly provisioned virtual machine will show up in the navigator.

• Virtual Machine Dashboard : Shows summary information about virtual machine as well as cpu performance data. It also shows configuration information including template, storage, security group and networking details.

Virtual Machine Dashboard : Overview

Virtual Machine Dashboard : Config

1.6 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.1

1.6.1 Managing Existing Virtual Machines from EC2/Eucalyptus/OpenStack

Now while creating Virtual Data Centers, you can select existing virtual machines from EC2/Eucalyptus or OpenStack IaaS. This simplifies transitioning day to day management to ConVirt.

Provision Virtual Data Center : Regions

Provision Virtual Data Center : Select Existing Virtual Machines

1.6.2 Eucalyptus 2.0.3

With 3.1, Eucalyptus version 2.0.3 is also supported.

Known Issues :

• Storage Management : Creating Snapshot from Volume, Detaching Volume.

1.6.3 ConVirt Enterprise Enhancements

As ConVirt Enterprise Cloud includes ConVirt Enterprise features please visit Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise 3.1

1.7 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.1.1

This update include bug fixes and enhancements.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS : Now Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is supported as managed server as well as for CMS for Cloud Edition.

OpenStack Essex : OpenStack Essex is supported now.

1.8 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.1.2

VhostNet support : VhostNet provides better latency (10% less than e1000 on my system) and greater throughput (8x the normal virtio, around 7~8 Gigabits/sec here) for network. Now vhost=on can be specified in the vif property in Miscellaneous page of the VM settings page from ConVirt.

Security fix : One of the security issue found is fixed in this release.

1.9 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.2

Follow 3.2 documentation to learn more.

1.10 Whats new in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud 3.3

Follow 3.3 documentation for enterprise features.

Proxy support for EC2 IaaS and Cloud

In addition, with this release, experimental support for EC2 behind proxy is added.

ESXi/vSphere and vCenter environment can be converted to Cloud

Starting 3.3.6, ConVirt allows you to easily create IaaS and Virtual Data Centers from existing ESXi/vSphere or vCenter environments.