Deploying your Infrastructure
Use the following information to deploy and set up SAP HANA and/or SAP NetWeaver on IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers for Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
Setting up a VPC and subnet
The following steps summarize the setup of VPC and subnets, which is detailed further in the Create an IBM Cloud VPC.
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Click Menu icon
> VPC Infrastructure > Network > VPCs -
Click Create.
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Select a Location for the VPC. The location consists of a Geography and a Region.
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Enter a unique Name for the VPC.
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Select a Resource group. Use resource groups to organize your account resources for access control and billing purposes. For more information, see Best practices for organizing resources in a resource group and What makes a good resource group strategy?.
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Optional: Enter tags to help you organize and find your resources. You can add more tags later. For more information, see Working with tags.
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Select whether the Default security group allows inbound SSH and ping traffic to bare metal server instances in this VPC. You can modify the default security group later.
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Optional: Classic access. Select whether you want to enable your VPC to access classic infrastructure resources. For more information, see Setting up access to classic infrastructure.
You can enable only a VPC for classic access when it is created. You cannot update a VPC to add or remove classic access. In addition, you can have only one classic access VPC in your account at any time.
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Optional: Default address prefixes. Disable this option if you don't want to assign default subnet address prefixes to each zone in your VPC. After you create your VPC, you can go to its details page and set your own subnet address prefixes. If you do disable this option, the Subnets section will be hidden, and will require manual definition after the VPC is created. Leave the option enabled.
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Subnets. You can keep the default subnets for each zone in the selected location or can delete one or more of them and/or create a new subnet. Leave the default subnets.
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Review the configuration Summary and then click Create virtual private cloud.
Manually defining your subnets
If you disabled Default address prefixes, which hid the Subnets section on the VPC ordering page, you need to manually define your subnets before you provision your bare metal server. Use the following steps to set up your subnets if you didn't do so when you set up your VPC.
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Click Menu icon
> VPC Infrastructure > Subnets > New Subnet. -
Select a Location for the subnet. The location consists of a Geography, a Region, and a Zone.
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Enter a unique Name
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Select a Resource group.
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Optional: Enter tags to help you organize and find your resources. You can add more tags later. For more information, see Working with tags.
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Select the Virtual private cloud that the subnet is to be associated with.
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Leave all other values default.
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Review the configuration Summary and then click Create virtual private cloud.
If you want to learn more on VPC and subnet creation, read section Creating a VPC and subnet in the VPC product tutorials.
Provisioning your Bare Metal Server
Before you can create a bare metal server, you must create the VPC, and you must create an SSH key that you add to the server instance during its creation. For more information, see SSH keys with bare metal servers. You can either create the VPC and SSH key before you follow the steps, or you can click the related links within the Create bare metal server UI to do the same.
Use the following steps to order your bare metal server and necessary components. For more information about creating a bare metal server, see Creating a bare metal server by using the UI.
- Log in to the IBM Cloud console with your unique credentials.
- Click Menu icon > Compute > Bare metal servers.
- Select the Region and click Create.
- Enter the information that is in Table 1.
- Review the configuration Summary and then click Create bare metal server.
After the bare metal server is provisioned and is ready for SSH logon, you can begin installing SAP HANA or SAP NetWeaver applications.
Table 1 is a summary of the fields and values that are used to provision Bare Metal Servers for Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Location | Locations are composed of regions (specific geographic areas) and zones (fault tolerant data centers within a region). Select the location where you want to create your bare metal server. |
| Name | Unique name for your bare metal server, which becomes the hostname. SAP hostnames must consist of a maximum of 13 alpha-numeric characters. For more information about SAP hostnames, see SAP Notes 611361 and 129997. |
| Resource group | Use resource groups to organize your account resources for access control and billing purposes. |
| Note: The resource group can't be changed after the bare metal server is created. | |
| Optional: Tags | You can assign labels to your server so that you can easily filter resources in your resource list. |
| Operating System |
|
| Profile | Select one of the profiles that are outlined in Bare Metal Server certified profiles for SAP HANA or Bare Metal Server certified profiles for SAP NetWeaver. |
| SSH Key | Select an existing public SSH key or click New SSH key to add a new one. You must specify at least one SSH key. SSH keys are used to securely connect to a running instance. |
| Note: Alpha-numeric combinations are limited to 100 characters. For more information, see SSH keys. | |
| Optional: User data | You can add user data to automatically complete common configuration tasks or run scripts. For more information, see User data. |
| Virtual private cloud | Specify the VPC where you want to create your server. You can use the default VPC, another existing VPC, or you can create a new VPC. |
| Network interfaces | Assign networking options to connect into the IBM Cloud VPC. You can create and assign multiple up to 8 PCI network interfaces and 128 VLAN interfaces on top of network interfaces. |
Creating the network interface
Bare metal servers for VPC can be configured with two different types of network interfaces, up to 8 PCI (that is, physical interfaces) and 128 VLAN interfaces on-top the physical interfaces.
VLAN interfaces are strictly targeting advanced virtualization scenarios on top of the bare metal servers. Read the section Managing network interfaces for Bare Metal Servers on VPC carefully before you order the network interfaces.
To add a new network interface to your Bare metal server for VPC instance, complete the following steps:
- In the Network interfaces section of the Instance details page, click Create.
- On the Create network interface page, the interface name defaults to an incremented number. If this is the first new interface after your primary interface, the default name is eth1. You can change the name if you want.
- Select a subnet from the subnets that are assigned to your existing network interfaces.
- Select the method for choosing an IP address for the new interface. Either select a dedicated or let IBM Cloud® reserve it for you.
- Select the security group that you want to associate with the network interface.
- Choose, if you want to create a VLAN or a PCI interface. For a VLAN interface, a VLAN ID needs to be provided. Choose PCI interface in this case.
- You can configure IPs as ‘floating’. For more information, see Associating floating IPs with a network interface for more information on floating IPs.
- Click Create.
More information is shown on VPC Infrastructure - Managing network interfaces.
Bring your own OS product license
When you have your own operating system license, you can install it on your bare metal server based on the vendor's instructions. For more information about custom images, see Importing and managing custom images.
The OS chosen must be certified for SAP and have access to the necessary OS Packages for SAP.
Storage layout for Bare Metal Servers on VPC
Internal storage
Your Bare metal server on VPC comes with a number of internal NVMEs, depending on its size. For SAP NetWeaver based deployment, you can use those NVMEs that are presented as block devices to the operating system. The NVMEs are listed under “/dev/nvmeXn1” (X from 0 to the number of NVMEs in total, minus 1). Use the NVMEs according to your requirements and needs. For SAP HANA based deployments, refer to Bare Metal Server certified profiles for SAP HANA to see the details on laying out the storage.
External storage
If more storage needs to be added to your bare metal server on VPC, for example, for backup purposes, NFS-based file shares can be created and mounted. Learn more details in the corresponding chapter Creating file shares and mount targets.