Getting started as an administrator

Before you can start performing tasks in PowerVC, review the information in Configuring Security. Next, register the resources that you want to manage. You can register a storage system and hosts, and create networks to use when you deploy images.

1. Access PowerVC by opening your browser and typing https://powervc_hostname or https://powervc_IP_address.
2. Log in to PowerVC.
   Note: To register resources, you must sign in with the credentials of a user with the admin role.
3. On the Home page, click Add Host or Add Storage to register hosts or storage. To register networks or fabrics, click the appropriate icon in the left navigation pane, then click Add. As you register these resources, keep in mind the following information:

   Option	Description
   Host	When you register a host, you must select whether the host is managed by HMC, KVM, or PowerVM® NovaLink. If the host is HMC managed, provide the name and credentials for the Hardware Management Console that manages the host. Specify a user ID with the hmcsuperadmin role. You might be prompted to accept the X.509 certificate. Notes: PowerVC does not support management of OpenPOWER systems through HMC. For redundant or dual HMC configuration, you must register both HMCs based on the configuration requirements. The primary and secondary HMCs must be at the same level. Although you can register multiple secondary HMCs for a host, failover is supported to only one HMC, based on the registration order. If the host is NovaLink managed, provide the name and credentials for the NovaLink partition. Specify a user ID that is a member of the pvm_admin group or has both SSH access and sudoers NOPASSWD capabilities. You might be prompted to accept the SSH Host Key.  To register a NovaLink host using SSH key, perform the following steps: In the PowerVC CLI, run # ssh-keygen -t rsa command to generate SSH key. The id_rsa and id_rsa.pub files are generated which can be located in .ssh folder. Copy the public key into the NovaLink host. # ssh-copy-id -i id_rsa neo@novalink_ip Copy id_rsa files into your local system for registration. # scp -r id_rsa.pub abc@10.x.x.x:/home/ # scp -r id_rsa abc@10.x.x.x:/home/ In the NovaLink CLI, make sure you update wlp in the /etc/sudoers sudo vi sudoers to neo. neo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL Register NovaLink host using SSH key from the PowerVC user interface. Click on add NovaLink host and specify required parameters. For Authentication type, select SSH key. Browse and upload the id_rsa file from your local system. Click Add Host. If the host is KVM managed, provide the name and credentials for the KVM that manages the host. Specify a user ID with the superadmin role.
   Fabric	You must specify a user ID that has sufficient authority to create and delete zones.
   Storage	You must specify a storage provider user ID that has sufficient privileges to perform required storage operations like creating, deleting, and mapping volumes. Normally, this requires administrator type of authority. You might be prompted to accept the SSH host key or X.509 certificate. For PowerVC to recognize storage that is added while the virtual machine is running, you must set up the RMC connection for the virtual machine as described in Set up the RMC connection unless the virtual machine was deployed from an image with RMC already installed. On SLES and RHEL hosts, nothing further needs to be done. On AIX® hosts, run the cfgmgr command on the virtual machine after adding storage. When you register storage, a default storage template is created. Storage templates enable you to specify the properties of a storage volume, such as thin provisioning and compression. You can use the default templates when you create a volume, or you can customize your environment by creating storage templates to suit your needs. You must add the appropriate fabric information to PowerVC. This can be done before or after provider registration.
   Network	In PowerVC, a network includes information about how your network is subdivided using VLANs as well as information about the subnet mask, gateway, and other characteristics. A network in PowerVC can be static with IP addresses determined by PowerVC when a virtual machine is deployed, or DHCP with IP addresses set by a DHCP server after a virtual machine boots. When you create a static network, PowerVC creates an IP address pool that can be used by the virtual machines in the network based on the subnet mask and the gateway IP addresses you provide. You can lock an IP address in the IP address pool so that it is not used during deploy When you deploy an image, you choose an existing network and the network settings are applied to the new virtual machine. Defining networks this way makes it easy for you to correctly deploy images. You might need to talk with your network administrator to gather the information you need to create your networks. PowerVC can also utilize SR-IOV adapters on PowerVM hosts for workloads that need high performance networking. When creating a network, specify the physical network name. This physical network name uniquely identifies a segment of your physical network, and will map to the PowerVM port labels assigned to each SR-IOV physical Ethernet port. This mapping is used to ensure that virtual machines are always deployed and migrated to physical Ethernet ports connected to the same physical network segment. Note: Special adapters are required to use SR-IOV backed networksSR-IOV networking. When you create a network in PowerVC, a Shared Ethernet Adapter is automatically chosen from each registered host. The Shared Ethernet Adapter is chosen based on the VLAN that you specified when you defined the network. If the VLAN does not yet exist on the Shared Ethernet Adapter, the network will provision the VLAN to the appropriate set of available Shared Ethernet Adapters. You can change the Shared Ethernet Adapter to which a network maps or remove the mapping altogether. However, consider the automatic assignment when you set up your networks if you do not want to change many settings later. You can add multiple networks to your environment and then choose any one or more of them during deployment. Software-defined networking (SDN) virtualizes your network in a similar way that compute resources are virtualized. With SDN, you can deploy networks and change your network layout without making physical changes to your network environment. PowerVC supports SDN on PowerVM NovaLink managed systems. For information about using SDN, see Software-defined networking. You can also create and delete a virtual network interface for a virtual machine from the PowerVC Virtual Machines user interface. After you create virtual network interface, you may have to restart your virtual machine for the changes to show. You can edit the IP address of a network interface for a virtual machine from the PowerVC user interface. To edit the IP address, open the Virtual Machines page then open the details page for the appropriate virtual machine. Next, open the details page of the network you want to edit and click Edit Network. Note: You must log in to the virtual machine and manually update the IP address to complete the process.