IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center

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IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center (ICIC) is an advanced infrastructure management (OpenStack compatible) software that includes on-premises deployments of IBM z/VM® and KVM-based Linux® virtual machines on the IBM Z® and IBM LinuxONE platforms.

Overview

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ICIC provides a centralized interface for managing your resources. It allows users to provision and manage compute, storage, and networking resources, as well as deploy and manage applications. With ICIC, you can easily monitor your environment, automate routine tasks, and optimize performance. It also provides a range of tools for managing your environment, which includes performance tuning, capacity planning, and resource allocation. ICIC is a powerful and flexible solution for managing your on-premises environment.

Following are the benefits of ICIC:

Simplified management: ICIC provides a single interface for managing all aspects of an organization's infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, and security. This simplifies management and reduces the need for specialized skills.
Improved visibility: ICIC provides real-time visibility into the infrastructure, allowing administrators to monitor performance, identify issues, and troubleshoot problems quickly.
Streamlined provisioning: ICIC provides a streamlined process for provisioning new servers, storage, and networking resources, reducing the time and effort that is required to manage the infrastructure.
Enhanced security: ICIC provides centralized security management, allowing administrators to define policies and controls for access to the infrastructure and to monitor and respond to security events.

Bring up ICIC

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To bring up ICIC on ICIC environment, install ICIC and do the following steps.

1. Upload HPCR Image on ICIC

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For information about uploading a .qcow2 secure execution image, see Uploading Image to Deploy Virtual Machines from Local Storage.

Make sure to fill the following details in step 2 of the procedure.


Field	Description
Image name	Enter an image name.
Description	Enter a description if needed. This field is optional.
Hypervisor Type	Select KVM.
Operating system	Select the latest RHEL version.
Image disk type	Select SCSI.
Image Source	Select FILE.
Disk Format	Select QCOW2.
Secure Execution	Select the checkbox.

Follow the steps of the procedure to upload a .qcow2 image.

2. Set up network for HPCR on ICIC

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For information about setting up a network, see Adding a network.

In step 2 of the procedure, make sure to select Type as Flat or VLAN (with VLAN ID), Virtualization type as Open vSwitch, and IP address type as DHCP or Static.

Note: ICIC cannot update the cloudinit file that is created while provisioning HPCR on ICIC. If you change interfaces after provisioning, the HPCR instance will fail on reboot.

3. Attach volumes to HPCR on ICIC

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Create the volumes in ICIC. For information about creating volumes, see Create volumes.
After creating the volumes, note the ID of the volume (UUID).

Update the UUID in the volume section of env in workload.

volumes:
    <volume_name_1>:
      volumeID: <UUID1>
      seed: <seed value with minimum 15 characters>
    <volume_name_2>:
      volumeID: <UUID2>
      seed: <seed value with minimum 15 characters>

Use the same volume names in the the workload section too.

Use the same UUID that is available in ICIC for each of the volumes.

You must select at least 10 GB of disk size for the volume to work for HPCR.

4. Provision HPCR on ICIC

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For information about provisioning HPCR on ICIC to create virtual machines, see Create virtual machines.

You must allot a minimum disk size of 100 GB for qcow2 in the Disk size (GB) field of the Compute template section and select the flat network that is set up in step 2 from the Primery network (system default gateway) drop-down list of the Add network section. Also, enter the HPCR contract in the Configuration script column of the Activation input section.