Creating a custom Linux image in IBM Cloud

To create a custom image for Linux®, manually order an IBM® Cloud compute instance with a base OS image for Linux. Then, customize the instance by installing IBM Spectrum Symphony.

1. Create a virtual server instance in the subnet:
   1. From a web browser, log in to the IBM Cloud console:

      https://cloud.ibm.com/login

   2. In the navigation menu of the IBM Cloud console, select VPC Infrastructure. Under the Compute section, select Virtual server instances.
   3. In the Virtual server instances for VPC page, click Create to create a new virtual server instance.
   4. In the New virtual server for VPC page, specify the details for your new virtual server instance.
      Tip: In the Profile section, select one of the profiles or click View all profiles to select a different combination of core, RAM, and network performance that is appropriate for your expected workload. After you create your instance, you can no longer change the profile.
   5. Click Create virtual server instance to create your virtual server instance.
   The virtual server instance is ready when its status is Running. You might need to refresh the page to see the change in status.
2. Use SSH to log on to the instance that you created as root.
   For example:

   ssh 192.0.2.3 -l root

3. Update the /etc/hosts file on the IBM Cloud host to add the host names of the primary host and primary host candidates in your IBM Spectrum Symphony cluster.
   If the ego.conf file in your cluster uses a short name for the primary host, add the short name of the host as well. For example:

   cat /etc/hosts
   198.51.100.4 localhost.localdomain localhost
   192.0.2.3 symcompute.ibmcloud.com symcompute
   192.0.2.5 symprimary.mycompany.com symprimary

   If an external DNS is not available, you can configure the ServiceDirector in IBM Spectrum Symphony as an internal DNS server (see Running IBM Spectrum Symphony without external DNS).

4. Copy the IBM Spectrum Symphony Linux package (for example, sym-version_x86_64.bin ) to this IBM Cloud instance.
   For example:

   scp sym-version_x86_64.bin root@192.0.2.3:/root/

5. Install IBM Spectrum Symphony on the instance as a compute host.
   1. Install IBM Spectrum Symphony (see Installing on a Linux compute host), for example:

      export BASEPORT=30600
      export CLUSTERADMIN=root
      export CLUSTERNAME=cloud
      export DERBY_DB_HOST=symcompute.ibmcloud.com
      export SIMPLIFIEDWEM=N
      export EGOCOMPUTEHOST=Y
      export IBM_SPECTRUM_SYMPHONY_LICENSE_ACCEPT=Y
      ./sym-version_x86_64.bin

   2. Source the environment for your shell. For example, when you use BASH, run the command:

      . $EGO_TOP/profile.platform

   3. Join the instance to the cluster (see Adding a host to a cluster). For example, run the command:

      egoconfig join primary_host

6. Create a custom Linux image using this virtual server instance.
   For more information, see the IBM Cloud documentations:

   • Importing and managing custom images
   • Planning for custom images
   Remember: This template name to be defined as the imageID for IBM Cloud provisioning.