Installing IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center

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This topic describes how to install IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center on a z/VM® standalone management node. Before you install IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, refer to Hardware and Software Requirements for z/VM System to ensure that all of the hardware and software prerequisites are met, and refer to Setting up the Environment for z/VM to verify that the current environment is configured correctly. This ensures that the management node is correctly prepared, which includes running a supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

The default umask setting of the root user of the management node must be 022, refer to Red Hat Managing the umask for how to check and set default umask for the root user.

Installing other software

It is recommended that IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is the only server application running on the management node.

Prerequisites:

  • Check if IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is already installed in the path /opt/ibm. If the icic directory exists, it is recommended to uninstall it to avoid package conflicts during a fresh build installation.

    To uninstall IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, follow these steps: 
    cd /opt/ibm/icic/bin
./icic-uninstall -f

  • Check rhel version: cat /etc/redhat-release. It should be either rhel8.8 or rhel8.10

    Set a proper hostname for the management node, for example, “ test “ or “testsystem”, having special characters in the hostname will fail with the error as follows:

  • Check if the DNS server is not configured for the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center installed node. It is reccommended to have the /etc/hosts entry so that during the installation, name resolution is taken care by the hosts file.

  • Verify yum reposlist: yum repolist cat /etc/yum.repos.d/{redhat_version.repo} if not found create redhat_version.repo /etc/yum.repos.d folder

  • “ gettext “ rpm is one of the pre-req rpm for the install, if it is not present in the RHEL server, Please do install the same .

  • if /etc/icic/config.properties not exist, make a directory named icic in /etc and create a file within it named config.properties. The content of /etc/icic/config.properties must contain configurations that are customized to your deployment environments.

Installing IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center

  1. Configure the dnf repositories for the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center installation.

    a. Configure the dnf repository by selecting and adding BaseOS and AppStream repositories. For more information, see Repositories. To avoid conflict, ensure all the other repositories are disabled or removed except for the BaseOS and AppStream repositories.

    b. Verify that dnf has correctly added both BaseOS and AppStream repositories.

    dnf repolist

    Example output:

    [root@mgmtnode ~]# dnf repolist
repo id                                  repo name
a-rhel88-s390x-appstream                 RHEL88-s390x-appstream
a-rhel88-s390x-base                      RHEL88-s390x-base

  2. Configure firewall settings.

    The IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center requires certain ports in order to run, as described in Ports Used by IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center. If the intended management node is currently running a firewall that blocks any of the ports required by the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, you need to update that firewall configuration before installing the IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center.

    As stated in Ports Used by IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, appropriate firewall configuration can be complex and specific to each unique environment. The recommended approach is to manually configure the firewall; however, automated firewall configuration is available as an option during IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center installation. The installer can configure firewall settings for you automatically on the management node. You are prompted with the option during interactive install. Alternatively, you can add the -c option which will configure firewalld by default or you can pass -c --firewall-type to specify firewalld or iptables depending on what is used in your environment. This is the only way to select it when you perform a silent install. This option cannot configure any firewalls external to the management node.

  3. Configure web proxy settings.

    If a web proxy configuration is needed on your IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center management node, you need to consider its configuration before you install IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center. IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center relies on internal web-based communication. An improper web proxy configuration might redirect requests that are meant for IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center to the web proxy.

    Before installing IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, ensure that the configuration has an exception for traffic that is meant for the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center system. For example:

    export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,.example.com"

    In the previous example, .example.com is the domain name of the management node. The IP address of the management node can be used in place of the hostname if the hostname of the management node is not defined in /etc/hosts on both the management node and DNS server(s). The hostname and IP address of the management node cannot be reconfigured after installation without breaking IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center.

  4. Set up the configuration file.

    Before you install IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, make a directory named icic in /etc and create a file within it named config.properties . The content of /etc/icic/config.properties should contain configurations that are customized to your deployment environments. Beneath is a sample of the configuration properties. Specify only one value for each configuration property:

    [icic configs]
physical_network=vlannet1
compute_instance_template=ins%05x
compute_user_profile=profile_name
default_admin_userid=admin_userid

    Note: The installation fails if the config.properties file cannot be found or any of the required configuration properties are missing. compute_user_profile and default_admin_userid are optional starting in 1.1.6.

    physical_network: This optional property specifies the name of the network provider to be used for the network connectivity of virtual machines. In this file it is z/VM purpose only. If you are using pure KVM environment you can ignore setting this property and only plan to add the KVM hosts. If the value for physical_network is not set, then the default value icicvlan1 is used. Because this parameter is for logical use only, you can allocate any meaningful name. If you don't require a customized network name, it is recommended that you use the default value of icicvlan1 . This network is appropriately mapped to the vswitch on each compute node after a host is added as stated in Adding hosts.

    compute_instance_template: The length of the virtual machine user IDs generated from this template must be 8. For example, when the value is specified as ins%05x , the virtual machine user IDs are generated with ins as the prefix and followed with the index: ins00000 , ins00001 to insfffff (make sure there is no conflict between the virtual machine to be created and existing virtual machines), which means the total virtual machines capacity is 1048576. Carefully determine the compute_instance_template value to ensure sufficient virtual machines capacity because you cannot change compute_instance_template after management node installation completes. Note: If the compute_instance_template property is missing, the generated virtual machine user IDs' length is not 8, there is any non alphanumeric character(A-Za-z0-9) in the prefix, or there are less than 4 bytes used for the index, then the installation fails.

    compute_user_profile: This optional property specifies the name of the z/VM® directory PROFILE that is included in the USER directory statements of deployed virtual machines. See the Creating a profile on the managed z/VM section for more information and a sample.

    default_admin_userid: This optional property specifies the z/VM® user ID with the authority to log on to deployed virtual machines with its own password. This value is used in the LOGONBY statement in the USER directory statements for the deployed virtual machines, as described in z/VM LOGONBY Directory Statement.

  5. Unpack the installer components.

    Note: Before unpacking, ensure that you have obtained an installer that matches your licensing model of Version 1.2.5.0 of IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is offered with either Per Virtual Server or Per Engine licensing.

    This process varies depending on the source of the installer.

    a. If you install from DVD, mount the ISO.

    mkdir -p /media/iso
mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/sr0 /media/iso

    Where /dev/sr0 represents the disc drive device, and /media/iso represents the folder onto which the DVD is mounted, but this can vary by system.

    You can find the installation files inside the directory that the ISO has been mounted to.

    b. If you are installing from a downloaded installation package named like CD828023.tar , you must extract the installation files.

    For Per Virtual Machine licensing:

    tar -xzvf CD828023.tar

    For Per Engine lincensing:

    tar -xzvf CD8281501.tar

    After you mount the ISO or extract the installation package, there are four files:

    • icic-opsmgr-s390x-rhel-1.2.5.0.tgz
    • icic-opsmgr-1.2.5.0.tgz.sig
    • icicpublickey
    • readme.txt

  6. Verify the binary file according to the openssl command described in readme.txt .

  7. Extract icic-opsmgr-s390x-rhel-1.2.5.0.tgz , icic-install-s390x-rhel-1.2.5.0.tgz can be found in the folder icic-opsmgr-1.2.5.0/images/ .

  8. Run the following command to extract the icic-install-s390x-rhel-1.2.5.0.tgz file.

    tar -xzvf icic-install-s390x-rhel-1.2.5.0.tgz

  9. Change the working directory to: extract_location/icic-1.2.5.0/ , where extract_location is the directory the compressed binary file was extracted to in the step before.

  10. Complete the final steps before you start the installation.

    Before installation:

    a. If doing a silent installation and you have multiple network interfaces, you must choose a dedicated network interface before running the installer (as described in Hardware and Software Requirements for z/VM System). You may set the environment variable HOST_INTERFACE to a valid interface before running the installation script. For example: export HOST_INTERFACE=eth1

    Note: If there is only a single interface on the system, the installer sets the HOST_INTERFACE environment variable automatically. If you have multiple network interfaces and the HOST_INTERFACE is not set, when running the installer the output is as follows:

    i. When installing with -s for silent the exit is as follows:

    You have selected a silent installation, but there are multiple network interfaces, please select on and export it to HOST_INTERFACE.

    ii. Installing with prompts (i.e., no -s ) prompts to select an interface:

    Multiple network interfaces detected, please select one from the list, IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center uses this interface as host management network interface:

    b. IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center requires the en_US.UTF-8 locale. Make sure the locale command can be executed without any warning and the locale environment variables are set to en_US.UTF-8, as follows:

    # locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

    Default values of LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 and LANG=en_US.UTF-8 will be used if these variables are not set prior to installation.

    c. If IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is installed via SSH to a management node with constrained resources or a slow network environment, the SSH connection can timeout during installation. If this is a concern in the current environment, one solution is to adjust the SSH configuration of the client machine (the machine that will be used to SSH to the management node). For example, using a macOS or Linux client, add the following line to ~/.ssh/config to have it send a packet every 120 seconds to keep the connection alive:

    ServerAliveInterval 120

    Note: Changing the management node's hostname after installation of IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is complete can cause service unavailability or operation timeouts, so make sure the hostname is set prior to installation.

  11. Install the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center on the management node.

    Note: After you download IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center 1.2.5 GA build, you must apply the 1.2.5 iFix 02 on the installer, before you proceed with installation or upgrade.

    The installer verifies that the environment meets all of the prerequisites during execution. If any errors are reported during the verification steps of installation, correct the reported issues and try the installation again.

    For the list of all available installation options, run ./install -h .

    Note: One of the pre-requisites for the installation is gettext RPM. If it is not present in the RHEL server, you must install the same.
    To verify if gettext is installed, run the following command: 
    rpm -qa | grep -i gettext
    If the RPM is not listed, install it using: 
    dnf install gettext
    If gettext RPM is missing, the installation will fail with the following message: 
    /install/
usr/bin/gettext is required for a system check but is not installed.
Install the gettext RPM for the system and run the install again

    As a root user, start the installation by using one of the following methods (IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center 1.1.6.0 or later installs are hybrid hypervisor meaning you no longer need to give the specific hypervisor you are using on install):

    • To start the installation:

      ./install
      Note: When you install IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center using ./install, the system will prompt you with the following question: 
      
Do you want to have first-level hypervisor management enabled on IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center? 1-Yes or 2-No? 
Note: First-level hypervisor management includes LPAR management. By default, this will be enabled. If you choose '2', only second-level hypervisor management (Legacy IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center) will be enabled. Proceeding with first-level hypervisor management enabled on IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center.
      The system enables platform management with this installation by default. However, you can select option 2, if you want to opt legacy IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center.

    • To start a silent installation:

      ./install -s

    • To start an installation and skip selinux checks:

      ./install -i

      Note: If selinux is not set to enforcing and -i is not given the installer will fail with the following:

      SELINUX is not enforced! Enable and enforce SELINUX, then try to install again.
The installation has exited with error code 266.

    • To start an installation and automatically configure firewalld:

      ./install -c

    • To start an installation and automatically configure iptables:

      ./install -c --firewall-type iptables

      Note:

      • As a reminder, by default firewalld is configured with the -c option, otherwise you can specify by -c --firewall-type [[ firewalld || iptables ]] options. If you want IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center to configure the firewall you must pass one of these for the installer to configure firewall settings automatically during a silent install. Otherwise, you need to set up the firewall rules manually. The -c option configures, and starts the firewalld service. The -c --firewall-type iptables option configures, and starts the iptables service.

    • (Optional) To automatically configure the firewalld or iptables after the installation use:

      cd icic-1.2.5.0/lib
./icic-config-firewalld.sh
or
./icic-config-iptables.sh

      Note: This step is only necessary to re-configure the firewall rules if you forget to select the firewall option -c for the installation.

    The installation log file can be found in /opt/ibm/icic/log . If the installation fails, refer to Troubleshooting.

    After fixing the error condition causing the failure, installation can be retried by specifying "-r" option to "install" script.
    Note: This enhancement is supported only for the standard mode of IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center installation and not supported for IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center with PR/SM hypervisor.

  12. After installation, run the following command to check the status of the services:

    /opt/ibm/icic/bin/icic-services status

  13. Refer to UI login for more information about logging onto the graphical user interface of IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center.