Creating an IBM Power Virtual Server

IBM Power Virtual Server located in IBM data centers: Off-premises

IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud: On-premises

To create and configure an IBM® Power® Virtual Server, complete the following steps.

Creating a Power Virtual Server workspace

Log in to the IBM Cloud catalog with your credentials.
In the search box, type Power Virtual Server and click the Power Virtual Server tile.
Click Create a workspace.
Select Location type as On-premises or Off-premises.

For On-premises location types, select the name of the created satellite location from the Satellite Location drop-down list.

For Off-premises location types, select the IBM Cloud region that is closest to your physical location from the Satellite Location drop-down list. For the list of available IBM Cloud regions, see IBM Cloud regions.
In the Details section, provide a name for the workspace and select the resource groups.
Click Continue. The selected workspace details are displayed on the Summary page. Review the estimated cost on the Summary page.
Select I agree to the Terms and conditions checkbox.
Click Create. You are redirected to the Workspaces page where you can select an existing workspace.

For more information about appropriate region for your workspace, see IBM Cloud regions.

Configuring a Power Virtual Server instance

To create a virtual server instance, you must first create a Power Virtual Server workspace and select a workspace. The created workspaces are listed under Workspaces of the Power Virtual Server user interface in the left navigation page. Select the workspace for which you want to create an instance. Complete the following steps to create a virtual machine instance:

Click Virtual server instances on the left page.

Select a workspace to display the virtual server instances that you have provisioned. You must refresh the page to see the updated information if you see outdated information. For more information, see the FAQ page What should I do when I do not see the latest information in the UI.

The virtual server instances that are associated with the selected workspace are displayed.

On-premises if an error occurs immediately after you create or open the virtual server instance, you must delete it.
To create a new instance, click Create instance.

If you select more than one instance under Number of instances, additional options are displayed.

The total due per month is dynamically updated in the Order Summary based on your selections. You can easily create a cost-effective Power Virtual Server instance that satisfies your business needs.

You must pin the IBM i virtual server instances that use the IBM i licenses. If you do not pin the virtual server instances and request for migration to a different host, the serial numbers change but the IBM i license will not work.
Choose an existing SSH key or create one to securely connect to your Power Virtual Server.
Complete the Boot image fields.

You can create or provision a virtual server instance (VM) without any initial boot image volume. VMs without boot volume are helpful in high availability and disaster recovery use cases. A VM can be created without a boot volume and the volume that is cloned or replicated can be attached to a VM to bring the backed-up VM.

Select the Deploy empty virtual server instance checkbox to provision a VM without a boot volume. For more information, see Provisioning a virtual machine without an initial boot volume.

You can create a VM without a boot volume for AIX, IBM i, and Linux (with a subscription provided by IBM) operating systems.

You can set the affinity policies for storage pools. For more information, see Configuring affinity policies.

When you select Boot image, the Power Virtual Server user interface allows you to select the boot images from a set of available stock images or from a custom image in your image catalog. Custom images are images that you can import from IBM Cloud Object Storage or create from a virtual server instance (VM) capture. When you select a stock image, you must also select the storage tier and the storage pool. When you select a custom image, the new VMs are deployed into the same storage tier and pool where the image resides. You must select a storage type for stock images. Currently, you cannot mix Tier 1 and Tier 3 storage types. For more information, see Storage tiers.

On-premises if you select a custom image from a local catalog, the VMs are deployed on a single storage tier.

If you select AIX as the boot image, the Power Virtual Server user interface provides you with an option to configure the VM instance for epic workload. For more information on epic, see configuring a VM for EPIC workloads.

If you select IBM i as the boot image, the Power Virtual Server user interface provides you with an option to include the following licenses to your VM instance:
- IBM i Cloud Storage Solution
- IBM i Power HA, and
- Rational Dev Studio for IBM i.
Adding a license increases the service cost. The selected licenses are injected to your VM instance. You can install specific solutions on your VM instance, and the licenses are automatically set. If you want to use these licensed programs on your IBM i VM instance, you must order these licenses through Power Virtual Server. You cannot use existing licenses in your VM instance.

If you select Full Linux Subscription (FLS) images, the Power Virtual Server user interface provides you with an option to pass in user data or scripts during the first boot runtime. When you end the user data for the Linux images, you must complete the validation checks that are in place. No validation checks are done for AIX and Bring Your Own License (BYOL) images. For more information, see Passing user-defined scripts.

Cloud Optical Repository (COR) is a virtual image that can be deployed and used as a Network File Server (NFS) to perform various IBM i tasks that require media. This virtual optical image includes a collection of the media necessary for various IBM i tasks, for all supported IBM i releases. With the COR image deployed, a second Power Virtual Server Instance can be deployed on the same VLAN that is set up as the client and pointed to the COR (target) NFS Server Instance. For more information on COR images, see Cloud Optical Repository.
Complete the Profile fields by selecting the Machine type, the number of Cores, the amount of Memory (GB) and Core type.

The core-to-virtual core ratio is 1:1. For shared processors, fractional cores round-up to the nearest whole number. For example, 1.25 cores are equal to 2 virtual cores. For more information about processor types, see What's the difference between shared capped and shared uncapped processor performance? How does they compare to dedicated processor performance?. If the machine type is S922 and the operating system is IBM i, IBM i supports a maximum of 4 cores per VM.

When you use an AIX stock image as the boot volume, a console session is required for the initial setting of the root user password. Without completing this step, SSH login appears as disabled. For more information, see How to create a new AIX VM with SSH keys for root login.
Complete the Storage volumes fields to attach or create new volumes and associate them with the virtual server instance.

Under Advanced configurations, enable the Configure for large quantity volumes toggle button to support more than 127 (up to 500) volumes. This setting is at a VM-level that remains unmodifiable upon provisioning.

Machine types E980 and E1080 are optimized to support the attachment of large quantity of volumes. Only IBM i VMs support the configuration of large volumes. You cannot create or attach volumes with more than 2 TB for IBM i VMs.

For more information, see Configuring for large quantity of volumes.
Define your Network interfaces by adding a public network, private network, or both. When you add an existing private network, you can choose a specific IP address or have one auto-assigned.

When you choose to provide a specific IP address, ensure that the IP address is not listed under reserved IP.

For an AIX VM, network interface controllers (NICs) are assigned based on the order in which you specify them during creation. To display the information about all the network interfaces after provisioning, open the AIX console and type ifconfig -a.
Accept the Terms of Use and click Create instance to provision a new Power Virtual Server. To view your boot images, go to Boot images after you provision the instance.

If your account has fewer than 100 VMs, you can use the Power Virtual Server user interface to view the VMs. If your account has more than 100 VMs, the VMs might not be displayed in the user interface. You can reduce the number of VMs by using the CLI or API so that they are displayed again on the user interface.

The following table provides more information about each Power Virtual Server instance field.

Power Virtual Server instance fields
Field	Description
General	Instance name: Specify a name for your virtual server instance. Number of Instances : Specify the number of instances that you want to create for the Power Virtual Server. You can apply placement groups only when you are creating a single VM instance. If you choose the Machine type as E980, you can choose an anti-affinity policy with maximum of 2 VM instances. Placement group: If you are creating only one instance, you can choose the placement group to control on which host this instance will be hosted on. Select a placement group from the list. To create a new placement group, select one of the following options: Same server : Select this option to place the VM on the same host. Different servers : Select this option to place the VM on a different host. Colocation rules: If you specify more than one instance, you can select the following naming conventions and colo rules: No preference: Select this option if you do not have a hosting preference. Same server : Select this option to host all instances on the same server. A placement group is automatically created. The instance name that is previously provided is used as the group name and cannot be edited. Different server : Select this option to host each instance on a different server. You can use this option if you are concerned about a single-server outage that might affect all Power Virtual Server instances. A placement group is automatically created. The instance name that is previously provided is used as the group name and cannot be edited. Numerical prefix : Select this option to add numbers before the name of the virtual server. If, for example, the first Power Virtual Server name is Austin the next name for the virtual instance is 1Austin. Numerical postfix : Select this option to add numbers after the name of the virtual server. If, for example, the first Power Virtual Server name is Austin the next name for the virtual instance is Austin 1. VM pinning : Select this option to pin your virtual machine. You can choose either a soft or hard pinning policy. Learn more. Note: When you create multiple instances of the virtual server, you must select On from the Shareable field for each data volume that you add. If you do not want the data volume to be shareable, you can add the data volume after you create the virtual server. For IBM i OS, you cannot have shareable data volumes.
Machine type	Specify the machine type. The machine type that you select determines the number of cores and memory that is available. For more information about hardware specifications, see S922 and E980 (Data centers other than Dallas and Washington).
Cores	The core-to-virtual core ratio is 1:1. For shared processors, fractional cores round-up to the nearest whole number. For example, 1.25 cores are equal to 2 virtual cores.
Memory	Select the amount of memory for the Power Virtual Server. If you choose to use more than 64 GBs of memory per core, you are charged a higher price. For example, when you choose one core with 128 GBs of memory, you are charged the regular price for the first 64 GBs. After the first 64 GBs (64 - 128 GBs), you are charged a higher price.
Boot image	Select a version of the IBM-provided AIX or IBM i operating system stock image. You can also select Linux stock images for SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver applications. For the SAP stock images it is mandatory to set an SSH key while creating the VM. You will be able to access the VM instance only via SSH after launch. However, it is recommended to set a password by using the `passwd` command during the first SSH access. By setting a password, you are able to access the instance in the UI console. You can also deploy your own custom image of AIX, IBM i, or Linux. IBM also provides a community-supported CentOS image under the Linux operating system. However, IBM does not provide any support for this image. For CentOS support, see the CentOS forum or FAQ page. Power Virtual Server now supports Linux (RHEL and SLES) stock images for non-SAP applications. To provision Power Virtual Server instance that supports SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver applications, see Provisioning your IBM® Power® Virtual Server. Important: When you use an AIX stock image as the boot volume, a console session is required for the initial setting of the root user password. Without completing this step, SSH login as root appears as being disabled. For IBM i operating system licensing information, see IBM i License Program Products (LPP) and Operating System (OS) feature bundles.
Attached volumes	You can either create a new data volume or attach an existing one that you defined in your account. Create volume: Click Create volume to create a new data volume for your Power Virtual Server instance. If you want to allow multiple virtual instances to write data to the same data volume, you must click On under Shareable. Attached Volume: You can select an existing data volume from the Attached volumes list. If a previously used data volume does not appear, it might exist under a different account or resource instance.
Public Networks	Select this option to use an IBM-provided public network. Cost is associated when you select this option. Learn more
Private Networks	Click Add to identify a new private network for the virtual server. If you already added a private network, you can select it from the list. For more information, see Configure a private network subnet.

Reusing Volume names or VM names in Power Virtual Server

You can deploy a Power Virtual Server VM by specifying any name. To delete a VM and to deploy a new VM with the same name, you must allow 1 hour between deleting the original instance and creating a VM with the same name.

For example, you create a VM with the name TEST-VM and you delete this VM later. The name "TEST-VM" is not immediately available for reuse. Before you attempt to use the name TEST-VM again, you must allow 1 hour to pass after the VM was deleted.

Implementing SAP NetWeaver and SAP HANA in the Power Virtual Server environment

You can deploy SAP NetWeaver on an AIX or Linux® operating system, and SAP HANA on Linux operating system, in your Power Virtual Server environment. You must consider several SAP-specific infrastructure requirements to run SAP applications on Power Virtual Servers. For more information, see Planning your deployment and Deploying your infrastructure.

Consider an IBM Power server E980 that is running in a multiple VM environment with at least one SAP HANA production system. You can deploy up to sixteen VMs per physical server with dedicated or dedicated-donating processor cores. Each concurrently running VM instance must be configured according to the workload and must fulfill the SAP HANA Hardware Configuration Check Tool (HWCCT) key performance indicators (KPIs). You must also consider the minimum number of CPU cores and memory size of VMs as described in SAP Note 2188482. For more information see, SAP support Launchpad. You must have an SAP ID to access this web page.

Configuring a VM for Epic workloads

You can configure your virtual machine (VM) instance to deploy Epic workloads when you select AIX as your operating system.

To configure a VM instance for Epic workloads, select the Configure for Epic workloads checkbox on the Boot image tile. You can verify whether the deployed VM supports Epic workloads by checking the corresponding VM details page. On the VM details page, the Deployment type field must be set to Epic.

In the VM details page, for the VMs on which Epic workloads are supported, you must not create or attach volumes from Tier 3 to avoid performance issues. For the VMs on which Epic workloads are supported and are in a shut-down state, you must not change the core type to any value other than dedicated to avoid performance issues.

The following table explains the differences in VM configuration that may or might not support Epic workloads:

VM configuration difference that supports non-Epic and Epic workloads
VM deployed for	Storage volume	Core type	Machine type
Non-epic workloads	Tier 1 or Tier 3	Shared uncapped, shared capped, or dedicated	S922 or E980
Epic workloads	Always Tier 1	Always dedicated	E980 or E1080

The epic VMs are not pinned by default that you can use internally for non-production usage. You must consider pinning the production epic VMs to avoid performance issues.

You can choose to configure a VM for Epic workloads only when you select AIX as your operating system. The other conditions that apply are as follows:

Epic workloads are supported on AIX 7.2 and later. You cannot choose AIX 7.1.
Supported storage volume is Tier 1. You can change or attach Tier 3 storage volume. Changing the Tiers leads to performance issues.
Supported machine types are E980 or E1080. You cannot select S922.
Supported core type is dedicated. You can switch to other core type, but it might lead to performance issues.

Configuring affinity policies

You can use the user interface to set the affinity policies for storage pools only when the total number of VMs in your account is less than 100. If your account has more than 100 VMs, then you must use the CLI or API to set the volume affinity policies.

Select one of the following Storage pool options:

Auto-select pool: Use this option to allow the system to automatically select a storage pool for the storage tier with sufficient capacity.
Affinity: Use this option to identify the storage pool that must be used to place the boot volumes based on an existing VM or storage volume from your account. The new storage volumes for the VM are placed in the same storage pool where the affinity object resides. If you are using a PVM instance as the affinity object, the storage pool that is selected is based on the PMV instance's root (boot) volume.
Anti-affinity: Use this option to identify one or more storage pools that you want to exclude from getting selected to place the boot volumes. The boot volumes are placed based on one or more existing VMs or storage volumes from your account. When you select a storage pool to create the custom image storage volumes, the storage pools in which the list of anti-affinity objects reside are not selected. If you are using VM as the anti-affinity objects, the storage pools are excluded depending on the root (boot) volume of each PVM instance that you specify.

To learn more about the flexible tier offering of Power Virtual Server, see: Storage tiers.

For more information about affinity and anti-affinity policy, see What does it mean to set an affinity or anti-affinity rule?.

If you add volumes to be created and attached to your new VM during creation then all the volumes are provisioned in the same selected storage pool. Volumes can be created in different storage pools after the VM is provisioned.

Provisioning a virtual machine without an initial boot volume

Create and deploy a virtual server instance (VM) without an initial boot volume.

The VMs without boot volume can be used for cloning operations. These VMs are not bootable until a boot volume is attached post provisioning. The following table shows which images are deployed based on your OS selection:

When you attach boot volume post provisioning of the VM, the boot image still shows the OS-specific image without the boot volume name.

Provision of VMs without boot volume based on the OS selection.
OS selected	Image deployed
AIX	AIX (Empty image) image without boot volume
IBM i	IBM i (Empty image) image without boot volume
Linux	You must select one of the following images: Linux - SUSE (Empty image) Linux - RedHat Enterprise (Empty image) image without boot volume
Linux for SAP (HANA)	Provision of VM without boot volume is not supported
Linux for SAP (NetWeaver)	Provision of VM without boot volume is not supported
Client supplied subscriptions	Provision of VM without boot volume is not supported for these OSs

When you select the Deploy empty virtual server instance checkbox, you can provision a VM without a boot image and boot volume. Review the following table to understand how the selection of the Deploy empty virtual server instance checkbox works along with the provisioning of the large quantity of data volumes:

Provisioning a VM with or without a boot volume.
Features	'Deploy empty virtual server instance' checkbox is clear	'Deploy empty virtual server instance' checkbox is selected
Boot image and volume	Provision a VM with a boot image and boot volume	Provision a VM without a boot image and boot volume.
Creating new volume during VM provisioning	Create up to 10 volumes from the VM provisioning page. To create volumes in bulk, use the Storage volumes page in the Power Virtual Server user interface.	You cannot create any volumes and attach to the VM during initial provisioning. You can create up to 10 volumes after provisioning.
Attaching existing volume during VM provisioning	Attach up to 500 existing data volumes	You cannot attach any volumes to the VM during initial provisioning. You can attach one boot volume and up to 500 data volumes after provisioning.
Attaching from multiple storage tiers	Supported. But if multiple storage tier volumes are used, a potential risk of failure of clone operation can occur.	Supported. But if multiple storage tier volumes are used, there can be a potential risk of failure of clone operation.
Boot volume	Boot volume is attached while provisioning. Click three dots on any data volume and set it as the boot volume. However, you cannot set shareable volumes as boot volumes.	Boot volume is attached after provisioning. Click three dots on any data volume and set it as the boot volume. However, you cannot set shareable volumes as boot volumes.

Configuring large quantity of data volumes on Off-premises

Off-premises

You can configure your virtual server instance (VM) while provisioning to enable it to attach or detach more than 127 (up to 500) data volumes from the user interface.

IBM i virtual machines in all the data centers except for the virtual machines in the CHE01 data center support the configuration of large quantity of data volumes. Configuring the large quantity of data volumes is supported only on Off-premises.

Limitations of large quantity volumes

Review the following limitations when you are configuring for large quantity of volumes:

It is recommended to perform the operations, such as deploy, attach, detach, or delete, in a sequential order to avoid any performance delays.
It is recommended to use image catalog to capture the virtual machines with large quantity volumes. Using Cloud Object Storage (COS) or any other cloud option might result in delays. The delay is depending on the size of your volume and network speed.
When you attach a large quantity of volumes in a single request, displaying the status value from available to attaching might be delayed. It is recommended to wait for the attach operation to be completed and then select the attached volumes for other operations.
Provisioning an IBM i VM with small data volumes (even fewer than 10 volumes in some cases) can cause a 3-5 hour delay if bulk-volume operations are ongoing on the storage controller. During this delay, the VM remains in the building state and cannot be modified.
When a bulk delete operation is in progress on a storage controller, provisioning an IBM i virtual machine, even with fewer data volumes, might get delayed. During provisioning, the virtual machine status continues to be in the building state and this status cannot be modified.