Create virtual machines

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To create a virtual machine, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the appropriate project and go to the Image page.

  2. Select the image that you want to deploy from and click Deploy.

  3. On the Images Deploy page that you are redirected to, provide input according to the requirement, including Virtual machine name, Deploy target, Compute template, Network, Activation Input, Tags and so on.

    • Note: When you boot virtual machines from volumes, if a specific host is selected as the Deploy target, the candidate storage templates are filtered based on the Allowed Storage Providers and Blocked Storage Providers settings of the selected host. Conversely, when a specific storage template is selected as the storage template, the candidate hosts are filtered based on the Allowed Storage Providers and Blocked Storage Providers settings of each candidate host. Some examples are as follows:
    • 3.1 When you create a virtual machine from a file backend image.
      • 3.1.1 When a specific host (for example, host_1) is selected as Deploy target.
        • a. If the allowed storage providers of host_1 include fl63, the Storage template dropdown list contains none (KVM only), auto-select and the storage templates belong to fl63.
        • b. If the allowed storage providers of host_1 is "", the Storage template dropdown list contains none (KVM only) and auto-select.
        • c. If the blocked storage providers of host_1 include fl63, the Storage template dropdown list contains none (KVM only), auto-select and the storage templates do not belong to fl63.
        • d. If the blocked storage providers of host_1 is "", the Storage template dropdown list contains none (KVM only), auto-select, and all the storage templates are added in the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center.
        • e. If the allowed and blocked storage providers of host_1 are blank, the Storage template dropdown list contains none (KVM only), auto-select, and all the storage templates are added in the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center.
      • 3.1.2 When a specific storage template (for example, storageTemplate_1 from storage provider fl63) is selected as Storage template.
        • a. If fl63 is in the allowed storage providers of host_1, host_1 is included in the Deploy target dropdown list.
        • b. If fl63 is in the blocked storage providers of host_1, host_1 is not included in the Deploy target dropdown list.
        • c. If the allowed and blocked storage providers of host_1 are blank, host_1 is included in the Deploy target dropdown list.
    • 3.2 When you create a virtual machine from a bootable volume, the Storage template is determined by which storage template (for example, storageTemplate_1 from fl63) is used to create the bootable volume. You can refer to item 3.1.2 to understand how a specific host is filtered out in the Deploy Target dropdown list.
    • 3.3 When you create a virtual machine from a volume backend image, the Storage template is determined by which storage template (for example, storageTemplate_1 from fl63) is used to create the bootable volume that is used for creating the volume backend image. You can refer to item 3.1.2 to understand how a specific host is filtered out in the Deploy Target dropdown list.
    • 3.4 When you create a virtual machine from a snapshot image.
      • 3.4.1 When the snapshot is captured from a virtual machine that has attached volumes only from one storage provider (for example, fl63), you can refer to item 3.1.2 to understand how a specific host is filtered out in the Deploy Target dropdown list.
      • 3.4.2 When the snapshot is captured from a virtual machine that has attached volumes from multiple storage providers (for example, fl63 and ds8k), the specific host in the Deploy Target dropdown list is filtered out based on whether the host is allowed for fl63 and ds8k.
        • a. If only fl63 or ds8k is in the allowed storage providers of host1, host1 is not included in the Deploy target dropdown list.
        • b. If fl63 and ds8k are in the allowed storage providers of host1, host1 is included in the Deploy target dropdown list.
        • c. If fl63 or ds8k is in the blocked storage providers of host1, host1 is not included in the Deploy target dropdown list.
        • d. If the allowed and blocked storage providers of host1 are blank, host1 is included in the Deploy target dropdown list.

  4. Select an FCP Multipath Template or use default Auto-select. The FCP Multipath Template is seen when the target host that you selected in previous Deploy target is on z/VM hypervisor. If you select an availability zone in the Deploy target listed in previous step, only Auto-select option is supported. Refer to How to use FCP multipath templates for more information.

  5. Click Deploy to deploy a new virtual machine.

Notes:

  • Refer to customized profile for more information how to specify a customized profile.
  • Tags are strings that are attached to an entity with the purpose of classification into groups. You can add multiple tags to a virtual machine. Use comma(,) to separate tags from each other and you can also modify tags. This feature helps you to filter out virtual machines based on tags.

Following are some restrictions on tag names:

  • Tags are case-sensitive.
  • ‘/’ is not allowed to be in a tag name.
  • Comma is not allowed to be in a tag name to simplify requests that specify lists of tags.
  • All other characters are allowed to be in a tag name.

Notes for z/VM hypervisor:

  • When you select the networks for this deployment by clicking the Add Network button, on the Add Network page that appears, you select a network and then specify a target subnet under this network.
  • The required disk size for provisioning a virtual machine needs to be equal or larger than the disk size where the image was originally created. If you specify one host as Deploy target, the required disk needs to be less than the maximum free disk size of the dasd group. In the section Dasd Group Details of the host Overview page, you can sort the columns Free Size(GB) to get the maximum free disk size in the first row.
  • If the version of the RHEL operating system on your z/VM host is lower than RHEL8.6, you cannot boot a RHEL9.x instance from volume on the compute node because the old kernel is not able to mount file system with new format. The RHEL8.6 and newer kernels have the capability.
  • If no dasd group is configured and boot from volume used, a V-DISK is used for the swap disk by default.
  • If dasd group is configured, a minidisk is created from the dasd group and used as the swap disk by default. If you want to use the V-DISK to create the swap disk, you can change the config swap_default_with_mdisk of the section [zvm] to be False in the /etc/zvmsdk/zvmsdk.conf on the compute node and restart the sdkserver service with the command systemctl restart sdkserver.

Notes for KVM hypervisor:

  • When you select the networks for this deployment by clicking the Add Network button, on the Add Network page that appears, you can select the network level, only, no subnet choices as there is only one subnet in one network.
  • The required disk size for provisioning a virtual machine needs to be equal or larger than the disk size where the image was originally created.
  • If you want to deploy one Secure Execution (SE) virtual machine, make sure to use the real SE image, which is one SE image that is generated by genprotimg and created with Secure Execution option selected when the image is created. Or else if you deploy one virtual machine with the pseudo SE image (It is not one Secure Execution(SE) image but select Secure Execution option when the image is created) on the SE host, the deployment is successful. The virtual machine is not a real SE one although the attribute Secure Execution is True for the virtual machine, but the SE capability is not enabled for it. The virtual machine cannot be protected as the real SE one. However, if you deploy one virtual machine with the pseudo non-SE image(It is one SE image but not selected Secure Execution option when you create the image) on the SE host, the deployment is successful at first, but the status of the virtual machine turns into Shutoff status and the attribute Secure Execution is False for the virtual machine. You cannot start or restart it. The virtual machine is unable to use and the status is always Shutoff. Refer to Planning for secure execution for more details.
  • To deploy an RHEL KVM virtual machine, you are allowed to specify one, or multiple security groups to associate with this virtual machine. If none is selected, the default security group is associated with this virtual machine. For more information about security groups, refer to Working with a security group.
  • When you deploy an RHEL KVM virtual machine that uses DHCP network, to ensure that the virtual machine successfully gets an IP address, you need to add explicit rules to allow egress to the DHCP server. For more information, refer to Security Groups rules and DHCP.

You can also use a Deploy Template to create a virtual machine and the steps are:

  1. Log in to the appropriate project and open the Deploy Templates page.
  2. Select the deploy template that you want to use and click Deploy.
  3. On the page that opens, specify the requested details.
  4. Click Deploy to deploy a virtual machine.

For more information about the Deploy Template, refer to Creating deployment templates.

Notes for HPCR-RHVS deployment:

Hyper Protect Container Runtime for Red Hat Virtualization Solutions (HPCR-RHVS) is a confidential computing environment that allows you to run containerized workloads with sensitive data in a highly isolated and secure environment, utilizing IBM Secure Execution for Linux. For more information about HPCR-RHVS, see see IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime for Red Hat Virtualization Solutions. For more information about IBM Secure Execution for Linux, see Introducing IBM Secure Execution for Linux.

To provision HPCR-RHVS on IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, see HPCR-RHVS on ICIC.