Alibaba¶

Features¶

Brownfield discovery
Instance cloning
Security group creation and management
Docker and Kubernetes provisioning and management
Usage tracking
Two-way tag sync

Supported Regions¶

ap-northeast-1 (亚太东北 1 (东京)
ap-south-1 (亚太南部 1 (孟买)
ap-southeast-1 (亚太东南 1 (新加坡)
ap-southeast-2 (亚太东南 2 (悉尼)
ap-southeast-3 (亚太东南 3 (吉隆坡)
ap-southeast-5 (亚太东南 5 (雅加达)
cn-beijing (华北 2)
cn-chengdu (西南1（成都）)
cn-guangzhou (华南3（广州）)
cn-hangzhou (华东 1)
cn-heyuan (华南2（河源）)
cn-hongkong (香港)
cn-huhehaote (华北 5)
cn-qingdao (华北 1)
cn-shanghai (华东 2)
cn-shenzhen (华南 1)
cn-wulanchabu (华北6（乌兰察布）)
cn-zhangjiakou (华北 3)
eu-central-1 (欧洲中部 1 (法兰克福)
eu-west-1 (英国（伦敦）)
me-east-1 (中东东部 1 (迪拜)
us-east-1 (美国东部 1 (弗吉尼亚)

Integrate an Alibaba Cloud with Morpheus¶

To add a new Cloud, navigate to Infrastructure > Clouds and click + ADD. Select “Alibaba Cloud” and click NEXT. Once the “ADD CLOUD” modal appears, configure the following:

NAME: A friendly name for the Cloud in Morpheus
CODE: A Cloud code used to reference this Cloud in Morpheus API
LOCATION: An optional field for tracking location data related to this Cloud
VISIBILITY: Public Clouds are available to all Tenants, Private Clouds are available to one selected Tenant
TENANT: If the Cloud visibility is set to “Private”, this field determines which Tenant the Cloud is exposed to
ENABLED: When marked, the Cloud is available as a provisioning target
AUTOMATICALLY POWER ON VMS: When marked, Morpheus is the source of truth for the expected power state of Instances. Morpheus tools should be used to control power state and Morpheus will override any unexpected power states (such as if an instance were powered on or off from the Alibaba web console)
CREDENTIALS: Select Local Credentials to enter authentication credentials on this modal, Existing Credentials to choose a pre-saved credential set, or New Credentials to enter authentication credentials on this modal and save them (in Infrastructure > Trust) for other uses later
ACCESS KEY: (When Local Credentials or New Credentials are selected) A valid Access Key for an Alibaba Cloud account
SECRET KEY: (When Local Credentials or New Credentials are selected) A valid Secret Key for an Alibaba Cloud account
INVENTORY: When marked, Morpheus will automatically onboard existing instances in the Alibaba Cloud account as unmanaged servers
REGION: Select the Alibaba Cloud region to associate with the Cloud (if this list is empty, check your Access and Secret Key credentials)
VPC: Select the Alibaba Cloud VPC to associate with the Cloud (if this list is empty, check your Access and Secret Key credentials)

Advanced Options

DOMAIN

Specify a default domain for instances provisioned to this Cloud.

SCALE PRIORITY

Only affects Docker Provisioning. Specifies the priority with which an instance will scale into the cloud. A lower priority number means this cloud integration will take scale precedence over other cloud integrations in the group.

APPLIANCE URL

Alternate Appliance url for scenarios when the default Appliance URL (configured in admin > settings) is not reachable or resolvable for Instances provisioned in this cloud. The Appliance URL is used for Agent install and reporting.

TIME ZONE

Configures the time zone on provisioned VM’s if necessary.

DATACENTER ID

Used for differentiating pricing among multiple datacenters. Leave blank unless prices are properly configured.

NETWORK MODE

Unmanaged or select a Network Integration (NSX, ACI etc)

LOCAL FIREWALL

On or Off. Enable to managed Host and VM firewall/IP Table rules (linux only)

SECURITY SERVER

Security Server setting is for Security Service Integrations such as ACI

TRUST PROVIDER

Select Internal (Morpheus) or an existing Trust Provider Integration

STORAGE MODE

Single Disk, LVM or Clustered

BACKUP PROVIDER

Select a backup provider. Depending on the Cloud type and any currently-configured backup plugins you may select Internal Backups (Morpheus) or another configured backup solution

REPLICATION PROVIDER

Sets the default Replication Provider for the Cloud. Select an existing Replication Provider Integration

GUIDANCE

Enable Guidance recommendations on cloud resources.

COSTING

Enable for Morpheus to sync Costing data from the Cloud provider, when available. For on-prem Clouds, enabling costing activates a costing service designed to mirror the live costing experience of public clouds, including invoicing with line items and real-time cost data (Operations > Costing > Invoices). If your organization utilizes reserved instances and you want to pull in related pricing data, some Cloud integrations include the option to select Costing and Reservations. If this is not relevant, select Costing to save money on additional calls to the Cloud provider’s costing API.

DNS INTEGRATION

Records for instances provisioned in this cloud will be added to selected DNS integration.

SERVICE REGISTRY

Services for instances provisioned in this cloud will be added to selected Service Registry integration.

CONFIG MANAGEMENT

Select a Chef, Ansible or Puppet integration to be used with this Cloud.

CMDB

Select CMDB Integration to automatically update selected CMDB.

CMDB DISCOVERY

When checked, any automatically discovered (unmanaged) servers onboarded into Morpheus from this Cloud will also have CMDB records created for them.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Select an existing Change Management Integration to set on the Cloud. ex: Cherwell

AGENT INSTALL MODE

SSH / WINRM / Guest Execution: Morpheus will attempt to use SSH, WINRM or Guest Execution for Agent install.
Cloud Init / Unattend (when available): (DEFAULT) Morpheus will utilize Cloud-Init or Cloudbase-Init for agent install when provisioning images with Cloud-Init/Cloudbase-Init installed. Morpheus will fall back on SSH or WINRM if cloud-init is not installed on the provisioned image. Morpheus will also add Agent installation to Windows unattend.xml data when performing Guest Customizations or utilizing syspreped images.

VDI GATEWAY

Set a VDI Gateway for outbound communication from the Morpheus Appliance to the vdi endpoints. VDI Gateways can be added in /tools/vdi/gateways

CUSTOM LOGOS

When integrating a Cloud, it will appear by default throughout the UI with its standard logo (VMware logo for VMware Clouds, etc.). If desired, you may upload a custom logo that should appear instead. This might be useful for MSPs which might not want to reveal the Cloud type underlying its services. A dark mode version of the logo may also be uploaded if the standard logo doesn’t look right against the Morpheus dark mode theme. Checking USE DEFAULT CLOUD LOGOS allows the user to return to the standard logo for the Cloud type without deleting the custom uploaded logo.

INVENTORY OPTIONS

Inventory options allow you to set a default active or inactive state for certain discovered resources. The list of available resources to configure will vary based on the Cloud type and its supported resources. By default, all possible resources for the Cloud type will be discovered in an active state. Uncheck the box for some or all resources to discover them in an inactive state. The list of potential resources that may appear include:

Service Plans
Resource Pools
Networks
Security Groups
Datastores
Folders

Provisioning Command

PROXY: Set a proxy for inbound communication from Instances to the Morpheus Appliance. Proxies can be added in the Infrastructure > Networks > Proxies tab.
Bypass Proxy for Appliance URL: Enable to bypass proxy settings (if added) for Morpheus Agent communication to the Appliance URL.
NO PROXY: Include a list of IP addresses or name servers to exclude from proxy traversal
USER DATA (LINUX): Add cloud-init user data. Morpheus 4.1.0 and earlier assumes bash syntax. Morpheus 4.1.1 and later supports all User Data formats. Refer to https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/format.html for more information.

Following Integration¶

After the integration has been created, Morpheus will sync existing workloads (if you’ve opted to inventory), security groups, tags, and more. Synced workloads can be viewed from Infrastructure > Compute. If Plans aren’t immediately available within a few minutes after the integration is created, navigate to the Cloud detail page (Infrastructure > Clouds > Your Integrated Alibaba Cloud), click REFRESH and click “Daily”. Shortly thereafter, the Plans should be synced and selectable at provision time. Without manually syncing the Plans, you may be unable to provision to this Cloud until it undertakes its next daily sync overnight as Plan selection is required.

You’re now able to provision new Instances and Apps to the Alibaba Cloud. Morpheus includes a default catalog that includes Alibaba images which can be provisioned out of the box. Additionally, you can begin to create your own custom library of Alibaba workloads by adding Virtual Images and building out Instance Types.