Planning

Effective preparation and planning make your installation and deployment go more quickly and smoothly. Review the following preinstallation requirements to prepare for your installation.

Hardware and software requirements
This topic provides a consolidated view of the hardware and software requirements for your IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center environment.
Planning for networks
In IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center, a network represents a set of Layer 2 network specifications, such as how your network is subdivided with VLANs. It also provides information about the subnet mask, gateway, and other characteristics. When you deploy a virtual machine in IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, you can choose one existing network to apply to the new virtual machine. Setting up networks beforehand reduces the amount of information that you need to input during each deployment and helps to ensure a successful deployment.
Planning for security
Security is one of the chief considerations for any application including IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center. Review the information here to understand your options and responsibilities in securing your installation.
Planning for z/VM storage
IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center supports to allocate disks from z/VM® DIRMAINT disk pool, so you must have a disk pool that is defined to make IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center carve minidisks from. For how to create disk pool, please refer to Directory Maintenance Facility for z/VM.
Planning for storage providers
IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center manages volumes that can be attached to virtual servers. IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center uses the term storage provider for any system that provides storage volumes. These storage volumes can be integrated devices or pluggable devices.
Planning for hosts
One management node can manage several compute nodes. If you have multiple z/VM® systems to be managed by the IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center, the management node only needs to be installed on one of the managed z/VM systems and the compute node needs to be installed on each of the managed z/VM systems.
Sample configurations
IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center supports a variety of technologies and configurations that you may use in your environment. Some sample configurations are described here, so you can understand how to configure your environment for IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center or see how IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center fits into your existing environment.