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Getting started with the Power Edge Router

Getting started with the Power Edge Router

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

IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud: On-premises

A Power Edge Router (PER) is a high-performance router that provides advanced routing capabilities for IBM® Power® Virtual Server users.

PER improves network communication across different parts of the IBM network. The PER solution creates a direct connection to the IBM Cloud Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) backbone, making it easy for different parts of the IBM network to communicate with each other. The PER solution consists of two routers that enable an aggregate connectivity of 400 Gbps to each Power Virtual Server Performance Optimized Data (POD) center. A POD is a modular data center.

The PER capability will be deployed in all the data centers over time. See Data centers that support PER for more information.

PER associates specific Power Virtual Server networks with unique MPLS route distinguishers (RDs). The association different networks to communicate with each other across the IBM Cloud MPLS backbone.

To facilitate communication between Power Virtual Server instances and other parts of the network, such as Classic infrastructure, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and remote Power Virtual Server instances, the Transit Gateway is used.

By using PER solution, as a Power Virtual Server user you can access other IBM Cloud services, such as IBM Cloud domain name server (DNS), Network Time Protocol (NTP), and Cloud Object Storage. You can connect to these services without having to use proxies or virtual routers, as the PER solution includes a Network Address Translation (NAT) device that simplifies the access process.

The following network architecture diagram explains how the PER is integrated into the IBM Cloud environment:

Power Edge Router network architecture diagram
Power Edge Router network architecture diagram

The network traffic in a PER environment can flow in the following two ways:

  • Accessing classic infrastructure through the Transit Gateway.

    • 1 - Traffic from ACI tenants is forwarded to the PER.
    • 2 - PER forwards the traffic to classic infrastructure services that use Transit Gateway.

  • Accessing cloud services that can access the resources attached to each other.

    • 1 - Traffic from ACI tenants is forwarded to the PER.
    • 3 - Traffic from PER is forwarded to the NAT services with Service Gateway routers. The Service Gateway converts the destination addresses to ADN and CSE networks.
    • 4 - The converted traffic from NAT is forwarded to PER.
    • 2 - Traffic from PER is now forwarded to IBM Cloud PPRs for final delivery.

The automation of ACI, PER, and NAT Services provisioning in IBM data centers is designed to simplify network integration and accelerate connection time for IBM Power Virtual Server users in the IBM Cloud.

For detailed networking PER use cases and architecture diagrams, see Power Edge Router use cases.

Considerations for using PER

  • You cannot create a Cloud Connection or a VPN connection in a PER workspace.
  • You can establish a connection between collocated workspaces if one colocation facility (colo) is PER-enabled (such as DAL10) and the second colo (DAL12 / DAL13) uses Direct Link. Both collocated workspaces must be connected to the same Transit Gateway.
  • When a PER workspace is connected to a Transit Gateway, you can connect a Direct Link to the same Transit Gateway. You can use the connection to achieve an end-to-end connectivity from a network in your client-managed environment to the PER workspace.
  • You can establish a connection between VPC and classic infrastructure with PER by adding them to the Transit Gateway.
  • When you create private networks in a PER workspace, a maximum of one DNS server can be specified.
  • A GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation) tunnel is not supported in a PER workspace.
  • You cannot create a non-PER workspace in a PER-enabled data center. However, you can still use your old non-PER workspaces that are existing in a PER-enabled data center that are created before PER rollout.
  • In certain situations, local connection charges can apply when you connect from a client-managed location to Power Virtual Server. To ensure accurate pricing, it is important to use the cost estimator tool. See the Pricing of Power Edge Router to learn more about PER pricing.

Migrating to PER

The existing Power Virtual Server workspaces do not support PER. To use PER, create a new workspace or to migrate your workspace to PER with a support ticket.

The automation to migrate an existing network is not supported. However, if your existing workspaces are in a PER-enabled data center and use a Cloud connection with Transit Gateway, you can connect to a new PER-enabled network instance.

Existing Power Virtual Server workspaces continue to support Cloud connection and VPN as a Service (VPNaaS).

Existing non-PER workspaces continue to use existing routers. To use the high-performance routers provided with PER, create a new PER-enabled workspace to deploy VMs while you continue to use the non-PER-enabled workspace. To migrate the existing workloads into the new PER-enabled workspace, back up the data from the existing workspace and restore the data into the PER-enabled new workspace.

Complete the following steps to connect an existing workspace to an existing Transit Gateway by using the IBM Cloud command-line interface (CLI):

  1. Use the ibmcloud pi workspaces command to list the Power Virtual Server workspaces in your account. Make note of the cloud resource name (CRN) for the workspace that you want to connect to the Transit Gateway.

  2. Use the ibmcloud tg gateways command to list the Transit Gateways within your account. Make a note of the gateway ID that you want to connect to the Power Virtual Server workspace.

  3. Use the ibmcloud tg connection-create command to create a new connection between the Transit Gateway and the PER-enabled workspace.

For example, ibmcloud tg connection-create aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeee —name powervs_per_fra02 —network-id crn:v1:bluemix:public:power-iaas:fra02:a/aaaa:bbbb:: —network-type power_virtual_server is an executable command, where:

  • Transit Gateway ID is aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeee
  • The Power Virtual Server workspace CRN is crn:v1:bluemix:public:power-iaas:fra02:a/aaaa:bbbb::

Creating a PER workspace

To create a PER workspace, follow the steps that are mentioned in Creating a Power Virtual Server workspace and choose a PER-enabled data center.

You can check whether a workspace is PER-enabled by selecting the workspace and viewing the details of the workspace. The PER-enabled workspace shows an information message on Transit Gateway.

You can create, delete, attach, detach, and update private networks by using the Subnets and Virtual server instances pages on a PER workspace, the same as with a non-PER workspace. However, private networks on PER workspaces in a PER-enabled data center, such as DAL10, use upgraded networking technology for higher performance, and seamless connectivity. See, Configuring and adding a private network subnet to complete a necessary operation.

Use Transit Gateway only to configure the virtual connections, as opposed to using Cloud connection.

On a PER workspace, if you do not find the cloud Connections and VPN connections options in the left navigation of the user interface, then PER do not require or support these options.

On a PER workspace, you can do the following actions:

  • Attach a network without creating a separate Cloud Connection such as Direct Link.
  • Attach a connection to the IBM cloud network after you attach the Transit Gateway with your PER workspace.
  • Connect to your network in the client-managed environment by creating a Direct Link. Attach the Direct Link with the Transit Gateway that is present on the PER workspace.

To delete the PER workspaces that are connected to the Transit Gateway, you must first delete the Transit Gateway connections.

Using IBM cloud services in a PER workspace

From your PER workspace, you can create a virtual server instance and attach subnets to it. These virtual server instances can then access the IBM Cloud resources such as Cloud Object Storage, Domain Name System (DNS), and other services that use the allocated IP addresses in the range 161.26.0.0/16. See IaaS endpoints for more information.

Attach the workspace to the Transit Gateway if you want to connect your workspace with the VPC and classic infrastructure.

Attaching Transit Gateway to a PER workspace

Transit Gateway is required to connect with VPC and classic infrastructure. To attach a virtual server instance from a PER workspace with the Transit Gateway, follow the instructions in the Ordering IBM Cloud Transit Gateway.

Select Power Virtual Server under connection to attach a virtual server instance that was created on a PER-enabled workspace. You can also add VPC and classic infrastructures as connection.

The connections attached to the Transit Gateway can communicate with each other. For example, a Power Virtual Server workspace and VPC added under the Transit Gateway connection can access the resources associated with each other.

Make sure that the classic infrastructure is Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) enabled before you attach it to the Transit Gateway.

OS support in a PER workspace

AIX, IBM i, and Linux operating systems are supported in a PER workspace.

AIX and IBM i support on PER

AIX and IBM i operating systems operate in PER workspaces in the same way that they do in non-PER workspaces.

Full Linux Subscription with PER

See Full Linux® subscription for Power Virtual Servers for Power Virtual Server to register RHEL84, SLES SP2, SLES SP3 images on a non-PER workspace.

Full Linux subscription RHEL86 and SLES15 SP4 images can be used in a PER workspace. Follow these instructions for a PER-enabled workspace to let the virtual server instance automatically register a full Linux subscription:

  1. Create a private network.

    1. Open the Power Virtual Server user interface from the IBM Cloud console.
    2. Click Subnets under Networking in the left navigation menu.
    3. Click Create subnet.
    4. Enter a unique name and CIDR. Make sure the CIDR being used is not the same as another CIDR already in use or a subset of that CIDR. The host server for the satellite server will be unable to resolve a network conflict as a result.
    5. Enter 161.26.0.10 in the DNS server field.

  2. Create a virtual server instance. See, Configuring a Power Virtual Server instance for detailed instructions.

  3. Attach the private network created in step 1.

  4. Verify whether the registration is successful with the following commands:

For SUSE:

SUSEConnect -s

For RHEL:

subscription-manager status

CLI and API support with PER

PER uses the same existing Power Virtual Server network APIs and CLIs.

For more information, refer to the Power Virtual Server documentation on:

Data centers that support PER

The following table shows the available data centers for Power Virtual Server and its corresponding status against PER:

Power Virtual Server supported data centers and its status for PER
Data centers PER available
CHE01 X
DAL10 Checkmark icon
DAL12 Checkmark icon
DAL13 Checkmark icon
FRA04 Checkmark icon
FRA05 Checkmark icon
LON04 X
LON06 Checkmark icon
MAD02 Checkmark icon
MAD04 Checkmark icon
MON01 X
OSA21 Checkmark icon
SAO01 Checkmark icon
SAO04 Checkmark icon
SYD04 Checkmark icon
SYD05 Checkmark icon
TOK04 Checkmark icon
TOR01 Checkmark icon
WDC04 Checkmark icon
WDC06 Checkmark icon
WDCO7 Checkmark icon