Importing a boot image

IBM Power Virtual Server in IBM data center

IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud in Client location

You can import a custom boot image by using the IBM® Power® Virtual Server user interface, CLI, or API. All data centers use Tier 0, Tier 1, Tier 3, and Fixed IOPs storage types. After you create a storage volume, you cannot change its storage type. A virtual server instance (VSI) can have disks from multiple storage types. Large boot images take time to import successfully. You might experience a delay in receiving a confirmation message.

Image import requires Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) access and secret keys to access your IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket. To generate HMAC keys for your IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket, see Using HMAC credentials.

The Power Virtual Server Job feature tracks long-running asynchronous operations like VSI capture, image export, and image import across multiple workspaces in your cloud account.

The Power Virtual Server VSI capture, image export, and image import features are restricted to one operation at a time per Power Virtual Server workspace. If you submit one of these operations successfully, you cannot submit another operation (VSI capture, image export, or image import) until the previous operation completes.

Importing a boot image by using the Power Virtual Server user interface

To import a boot image by using the Power Virtual Server user interface, complete the following steps:

  1. Log in to the IBM Cloud catalog with your IBM credentials.

  2. In the search box, type Power Virtual Server and click the Power Virtual Server tile.

  3. Click Workspaces in the navigation panel. The Workspaces page with a list of existing workspaces is displayed.

  4. Select the workspace where you want to import the boot image. The Virtual server instances page of the selected workspace is displayed.

  5. Click Boot images in the navigation panel, then click Import image. The Import boot image panel is displayed.

  6. In the Import boot image panel, complete the following steps in the Source section:

    1. Select the image OS from the Image OS drop-down list.

      If you select a customized SAP HANA or SAP NetWeaver image, select the self-certification checkbox.

    2. Select the region where your image is stored from the Region drop-down list.

    3. Enter the file name of the image in the Image filename field. The image file name must not contain spaces. Supported file formats are tar and ova. You can compress image files by using gzip. The supported file name extensions are .ova, .ova.gz, .tar, .tar.gz, and .tgz. You must use the private endpoint domain. For example, Aix_7200-03-02-1846_cldrdy_112018.ova.gz.

    4. Enter the name of your bucket in the Bucket name field. Optionally, you can specify folder paths within the bucket by using the format <bucketName>/optional/folders. Optional folders are created automatically if they do not exist.

      To identify your bucket name, click the menu icon Menu icon > Resource list > Storage > Cloud Object Storage name > Buckets.

    5. Enter your HMAC access key in the HMAC access key field.

      To identify your access key, select the menu icon Menu icon > Resource list > Storage > Cloud Object Storage name > Service credentials > View credentials. Copy the access_key_id value and paste it into the HMAC access key field.

    6. Enter your HMAC secret access key in the HMAC secret access key field.

      To identify your secret key, click the menu icon Menu icon > Resource list > Storage > Cloud Object Storage name > Service credentials > View credentials. Copy the secret_access_key value and paste it into the HMAC secret access key field.

    7. Set Validate import with checksum file to On to validate the import file against the checksum file. You can generate the checksum file while you export the image files to the IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket. Place the checksum file and import images in the same bucket.

      The checksum file name is based on the name of the imported image file and uses the .sha256 file extension. For more information about generating a checksum file, see Using the Power Virtual Server user interface to capture and export a VM.

      If you are creating your own image, you can create a checksum file and place the checksum file with your own image in the same bucket. You can generate the checksum file by using the shasum -a 256 <filename> or sha256sum <filename> command.

      Validating an import file against the checksum file might increase the import time.

  7. Click Next.

  8. Enter the following information in the Destination section:

    1. In the Custom image name field, enter a name for the imported image.

    2. Optional: In the User tags field, enter tags. If you use user tags for billing, consider using key:value pairs, such as costctr:124.

      User tags are visible account-wide. Do not include sensitive data in tag names.

    3. In the Tier field, select one of the following storage type options:

      • Tier 0 (25 IOPs / GB)
      • Tier 1 (10 IOPs / GB)
      • Tier 3 (3 IOPs / GB)
      • Fixed IOPs (5000 IOPs)

      Tier 1 uses NVMe-based flash storage and Tier 3 uses SSD flash storage.

      A VSI cannot have disks from both Tier 1 and Tier 3 storage types.

    4. In the Storage pool field, select a storage pool placement option. One or more custom image storage volumes are placed in the storage pool based on the storage pool placement options (auto-select, affinity, or anti-affinity) that you choose. The boot volume of any VSI that is deployed by using this image is created in the same storage pool. For more information about storage volumes, see Adding and managing storage volumes.

      The following storage pool placement options are available:

      • Auto-select: Automatically creates the storage volume in a storage pool with sufficient capacity.

      • Affinity: Identifies the storage pool that must be used to place the boot volumes, based on an existing PVM instance (VSI) or storage volume from your account. The custom image storage volumes are placed in the same storage pool where the affinity object resides. If you use a PVM instance as the affinity object, the storage pool that is selected to place the boot volumes is based on the root (boot) volume of the PVM instance.

      • Anti-affinity: Identifies one or more storage pools that you want to exclude from selection. The excluded storage pools are not considered when boot volumes are placed based on the existing PVM instances (VSIs) or storage volumes in your account. While you choose a storage pool to create the custom image storage volumes, the storage pools in which the list of anti-affinity objects reside are selected. If you use PVM instances as the anti-affinity objects, the storage pools are excluded depending on the root (boot) volume of each PVM instance.

  9. Click Import image.

The new boot image is listed on the Boot images page.

You can use the imported boot image to create a Power Virtual Server virtual server instance.

Importing a boot image by using the Power Virtual Server CLI

You can use the ibmcloud pi image import command to import an image from IBM Cloud Object Storage.

Example command syntax:

ibmcloud pi image import IMAGE_NAME --image-path IMAGE_PATH --os-type OS_TYPE --access-key KEY --secret-key KEY [--bucket BUCKET_NAME] [--region REGION_NAME] [--json]

Where:

IMAGE_NAME
The name for the imported image.
IMAGE_PATH
The path to the image file in the bucket.
OS_TYPE
The operating system type.
KEY
Your HMAC access and secret keys.
BUCKET_NAME
The Cloud Object Storage bucket name.
REGION_NAME
The region where your bucket resides.

To view the newly imported image, use the ibmcloud pi image command.

Example command syntax:

ibmcloud pi images [--long] [--json]

To import a customized SAP HANA or SAP NetWeaver image, use the -d, --import-details strings command.

Importing a boot image by using the Power Virtual Server API

To import a boot image from IBM Cloud Object Storage by using the API, use the Create an cos-image import job method.

To import a customized SAP HANA or SAP NetWeaver image, specify the following image details:

"importDetails":{
   "licenseType":"byol",
   "product":"Hana",
   "vendor":"SAP"
}

Viewing boot image import results

After you start a boot image import operation, the Status column on the Boot images page shows the import progress. To view more details, click View details to open the Ongoing job status dialog. The following information is displayed:

  • Job ID
  • Operation type
  • Input resource
  • Creation time
  • Steps completed

To view details of an image import job by using the CLI, use the ibmcloud pi image import-show command.

To view the image import status by using the API, use the Get detail of last cos-image import job method.

Downloading a boot image from Cloud Object Storage

To download your image after importing it, navigate to the Resource List in the IBM Cloud dashboard, and access your Cloud Object Storage workspace. In the bucket where your image is stored, select the image file that you want to download and select Download objects. For more information about the Cloud Object Storage CLI command, see Download an object.