Getting started with KVM

The IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center is an advanced infrastructure management offering, including on-premises cloud deployments of IBM z/VM-based and KVM based Linux virtual machines on the IBM Z® and IBM LinuxONE platforms.

This quick guide is to help to navigate through the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center documentation for KVM. Some sections also include content for z/VM®, skip these sections. Read this guide and keep the order of the topics to have a successful installation.

1. Architecture of KVM

To understand the architecture of KVM, read the overview page of the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, first. Here, you find an explanation and an architecture overview for KVM: Architecture overview of KVM

It is suggested to read the following sections first:

2. Prerequisites of KVM hypervisor and setup of the management node and compute node(s)

For each management node and compute node, a LPAR is needed as described in figure 1:

Step 1: prepare z/VM hypervisor — Figure 1. step 1: prepare the KVM hypervisor

The requirements of the management node and compute nodes can be found in the link beneath:

If shared storage between compute nodes is required follow these steps:

KVM Shared storage

To setup the management node and the compute node, follow these steps:

After this step, the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center architecture looks like in figure 2. The management node and compute nodes are ready to install IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center on.

Figure 2. Step 2: setup of management node and compute nodes

4. Installation

Now, all is ready to for the installation. Refer to the following documentation to do the installation of the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center and add the compute nodes to the installed IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center:

Run the environment checker to ensure the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is running well after the installation and add the compute nodes.

Run environment checker

For upgrade and uninstall:

After the installation, the management node and the compute nodes of the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center are ready to manage the infrastructures as shown in figure 3.

5. Day2 operations

After the installation of the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is complete, the following steps are required to enable the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center to perform day2 operations such as virtual machine life cycle management, network management, storage management and so on.

Images:

Working with images

Networks:

Having the network created and image uploaded to the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, the architecture looks like in figure 4:

Figure 4. Step 4: Network and Image setup

The virtual machine can be deployed inside the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center and the architecture looks like in figure 5:

Virtual machines:

Working with virtual machines

Figure 5. Step 5: Virtual machine deployment

6. Persistent storage

This step is optional and depends on the use case of the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center. If persistent storage is required, follow this guide:

Persistent storage:

6. Integration into other systems

The integration with upper layers via the OpenStack API, is documented here: Integration into other systems

7. Troubleshooting and FAQ (frequent asked questions)

Refer to the troubleshooting section for any problems: Troubleshooting
Refer to the FAQ for any frequent asked questions: FAQ