Release notes for IBM Cloud VPC

29 October 2024

File share replication enhancement

You can now schedule to replicate your data between your source and replica file shares as often as every 15 minutes. This feature is available in the console, from the CLI, or with the API.

Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section of the Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-19. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC. Clone the latest Secure-Build-Cli to create a Hyper Protect Secure Build server.

24 October 2024

Allow SSH and Allow ping are not selected by default when creating a VPC in IBM Cloud console

When you create a virtual private cloud by using IBM Cloud console, the default security group settings for Allow SSH and Allow ping are now not selected by default, ensuring the most secure option by default. During VPC creation, you can select Allow SSH and Allow ping as needed for your VPC configuration. For more information see, Creating a VPC and subnet.

18 October 2024

Deploy a route-based VPN in active/active mode

When creating connections for a route-based VPN, you can now enable the distribution of traffic between the Up tunnels of the VPN gateway connection when a VPC route's next hop is the VPN connection. To accomplish this, you must enable the "distribute traffic" feature when creating or adding a connection to a route-based VPN gateway. For more information, see the Distributing traffic for a route-based VPN use case.

15 October 2024

Linux SysRq key now available to troubleshoot Linux virtual server instance

When a Linux virtual server instance becomes unresponsive, you can now use Linux SysRQ key to troubleshoot the virtual server from the serial console. For more information, see How can I use Linux SysRq key to troubleshoot a Linux virtual server instance from the serial console?.

08 October 2024

GPU H100 profile now available in Dallas (us-south) and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions (select availability)

The GPU H100 profile is now available in the Dallas (us-south) and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions, in addition to London (eu-gb), Sydney (au-syd), Toronto (ca-tor), Madrid (eu-es), Washington DC (us-east), Tokyo (jp-tok), and Sao Paulo (br-sao) regions. The GPU H100 profile is available on the latest generation GPU-enabled infrastructure for running machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) frameworks in support of AI initiatives. When you use the H100 virtual server profile, it runs on an NVIDIA Hopper-based HGX server and is the sole tenant running on the host. For more information about the gx3d-160x1792x8h100 profile, see GPU profiles.

30 September 2024

Tagging VPC routing tables

VPC routing tables now support a cloud resource name (CRN) as an identifier when creating and updating routing tables. When reassigning the routing table for a subnet, the new routing table for the subnet can now optionally be specified by its CRN.

Now that routing tables have a CRN, VPC routing tables can be tagged, and access to VPC routing tables can be controlled by using tags.

26 September 2024

File Storage for VPC monitoring

You can monitor the read and write throughput, read and write IOPS, number of mount targets, and capacity usage of your share over time in the IBM Cloud console. For more information, see Getting started with monitoring and Monitoring metrics for File Storage for VPC.

25 September 2024

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-19 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-19, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

HPVS supports IBM Cloud Logs

HPVS supports IBM Cloud Logs solution. For more information, see ICL.

IBM log analysis is deprecated

Migrate HPVS instances to IBM Cloud log. For more information on migration, see Steps to migrate for existing customers.

24 September 2024

Block Storage for VPC snapshots for cross-account restore

You can now share a snapshot with another account and allow the other account to create volumes with the snapshot. To do so, you must set up cross-account authorization in Cloud Identity and Access Management, and share the CRN of the snapshot with the other account. The other account's authorized storage administrator can use the CRN to create a volume in the console, from the CLI, with the API, or Terraform. For more information, see Sharing a snapshot with another account in the console and Restoring a volume from a snapshot.

23 September 2024

Backup service integration with Event Notifications

Backup jobs that create or delete backup snapshots run according to the backup plan and the retention policy. You can now set up a connection between the Backup service and Event Notifications and receive notifications to your preferred destinations if a backup job fails. For more information, see Enabling event notifications for Backup for VPC.

20 September 2024

GPU H100 profile now available in Tokyo (jp-tok) and Sao Paulo (br-sao) regions (select availability)

The GPU H100 profile is now available in the Tokyo (jp-tok) and Sao Paulo (br-sao) regions, in addition to London (eu-gb), Sydney (au-syd), Toronto (ca-tor), Madrid (eu-es), and Washington DC (us-east). The GPU H100 profile is now available on the latest generation GPU-enabled infrastructure for running machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) frameworks in support of AI initiatives. When you use the H100 virtual server profile, it runs on an NVIDIA Hopper-based HGX server and is the sole tenant running on the host. For more information about the gx3d-160x1792x8h100 profile, see GPU profiles.

Secure boot for Virtual Servers for VPC (GA)

Secure boot is now generally available. Secure boot is a security standard that makes sure that your server starts with trusted software by verifying the digital signatures for all code in the boot process. When a server starts in secure boot mode, the firmware checks the signature of the boot software, including UEFI firmware drivers, EFI applications, and the operating system. If the signatures are valid, the server boots, and the firmware grants control to the operating system. Which means that secure boot helps prevent malicious software from loading when your server starts. For more information, see Secure boot for Virtual Servers for VPC.

18 September 2024

Next generation instance profiles available in Sao Paulo (br-sao) region (GA)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available in the Sao Paulo (br-sao) region, in addition to the Dallas (us-south), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), Madrid (eu-es), Sydney (au-syd), Tokyo (jp-tok), and Osaka (jp-osa) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

17 September 2024

Very High Memory profiles for SAP-HANA (select availability)

New Very High Memory profiles for SAP-HANA are now available. These profiles are only available in Toronto (ca-tor) region. For more information, see x86-64 Very High Memory profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

11 September 2024

Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-18. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

10 September 2024

Zone Maps and Universal Names for Zones

Account specific zone mapping has been introduced in all regions. Zones have an extra name that can serve as a global, cross-account identifier. A zone's universal name is documented per region and can be viewed when you view or retrieve a zone. For more information, see Zone mapping per account.

05 September 2024

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI BYOL custom images (GA)

The Red Hat Enterprise AI (RHEL AI) operating system can be imported as a bring your own license (BYOL). A RHEL AI qcow2 file is available directly from Red Hat. For more information, see Red Hat Enteprise Linux AI BYOL custom images.

03 September 2024

GPU H100 profile available in select regions (select availability)

The GPU H100 profile is now available on the latest generation GPU-enabled infrastructure for running machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) frameworks in support of AI initiatives. The GPU H100 profile is available in the following regions: London (eu-gb), Sydney (au-syd), Toronto (ca-tor), Madrid (eu-es), and Washington DC (us-east). When you use the H100 virtual server profile, it runs on an NVIDIA Hopper-based HGX server and is the sole tenant running on the host. For more information about the gx3d-160x1792x8h100 profile, see GPU profiles.

28 August 2024

Reservations for Bare Metal Servers for VPC (beta)

Reservations for Bare Metal Servers for VPC is now available as a beta feature. A reservation is a great option if you want guaranteed resources for future deployments and cost savings. You can choose between either a 1 or 3-year contract term for your reservation. For more information about reservations, see About Reservations for VPC.

21 August 2024

Select availability for Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC profiles

Instance profiles for the Hyper Protect Virtual Server instances are available in the Dallas (us-south), US East (Washington, DC), Toronto (ca-tor), São Paulo (br-sao), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions.

15 August 2024

IBM Wazi as a Service available in Frankfurt (eu-de) region

IBM Wazi as a Service (Wazi aaS) is now available in the Frankfurt (eu-de) region in IBM Cloud. For more information, see IBM Wazi as a Service product page.

7 August 2024

UI enhancement: Filter instance profiles by business scenario

When provisioning a virtual server, you can now use the By scenario tab on the Select an instance profile page to narrow the results to include only applicable instance profiles. For example, you can filter profiles by the following business scenarios: SAP; Web Development and Test; HPC; Confidential computing; AI, Deep learning & Machine learning; Visualizations, VDI; and Storage optimized. When a specific filter is selected, the profile results display only the profiles related to the defined business scenario.

5 August 2024

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-18 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-18, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Hyper Protect Virtual Servers image now supports IBM Cloud Log analysis renewed certificate that is signed with Digicert Global Root G2.

22 July 2024

Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-17. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

18 July 2024

Reinitialization on Bare Metal Servers for VPC (GA)

With the new Reinitialization action on Bare Metal Servers for VPC, you can reinitialize the bare metal server. This action is not available if the status is Running or if the bare metal server was provisioned with a boot volume. You can only reinitialize a bare metal server that is stopped or failed. When the bare metal server is reinitialized, the contents of the boot disk are wiped and the specified operating system is installed. The server retains the same physical node, interfaces, IP addresses, and resource IDs. Data on secondary drives is preserved. For more information, see Managing Bare Metal Servers for VPC.

08 July 2024

Parameterized redirect for application load balancers

You can now redirect traffic on Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), as well as other customizable parameters, when creating load balancer listener policies using the updated Redirect to URL action. You can redirect traffic to a dynamic URL through the application load balancer. You can also enter a static URL or retain the values from the incoming traffic request by using the default values of the URL parameters. This includes the protocol, port, host, path, and query, which, as a combination, makes the URL dynamic. For more information, refer to Layer 7 load balancing.

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-17 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-17, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

28 June 2024

Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-17. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

27 June 2024

Sapphire Rapids (x3 and x3d) x86-64 bare metal server profiles (Select availability)

Sapphire Rapids (x3 and x3d) x86-64 bare metal server profiles are now available in the Dallas (us-south) region. For more information, see x86-64 bare metal server profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

25 June 2024

Sharing file share data between accounts and services

With this new feature, administrators with the correct authorizations can share an NFS file system across multiple accounts. It's useful for customers who manage multiple accounts and need to share data across different VPCs. Customer can also share their File Storage for VPC shares with the IBM watsonX service. For more information, see About File Storage for VPC.

24 June 2024

Update firmware on Bare Metal Servers for VPC (GA)

The new Update firmware action on Bare Metal Servers for VPC is now generally available. You can see if a firmware update is available for your bare metal server and also initiate the update. You can use the UI, CLI, and API to update the firmware. In the UI, this action is only visible if the server is stopped and there is a firmware update available. It is recommended to back up your bare metal server before any firmware update. For more information, see Managing Bare Metal Servers for VPC.

20 June 2024

UI Enhancements to Images for VPC

The Images for VPC UI includes multiple enhancements. When you click any image name, a side panel is displayed for that specific image. From this Details page, you can review both the Details and IDs for the selected image. You can also click Continue to provisioning which takes you to Virtual server for VPC, where you can create a virtual server instance with the selected image.

Images for VPC also now includes the ability to filter the list of images with the following options.

• Region
• Operating system
• Architecture
• Deployment target
• Status

When you select a catalog image on Virtual server for VPC to create a virtual server instance, you are now prompted to Select version and pricing plan. From here, you can select the version and pricing plan for the catalog image, which must be completed first. You can then select to Save the catalog image.

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-16 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-16, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Base64 format of the attestationPublicKey

Besides the plain text format of the attestation public key, you can also use its base64 format to encrypt the attestation document during the contract preparation. For more information, see Preparing the attestation.

06 June 2024

Generic operating system custom images with Virtual Server Instances and Bare Metal Servers for VPC (GA)

Generic operating system custom images is now generally available. When you create a server on IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using an x86 profile, you can use an operating system that is not listed in IBM Cloud by specifying a generic operating system custom image. You can create this custom image by specifying one of the new operating systems with properties that indicate it is generic. When you provision a server by using a generic operating system custom image, most operating system-specific provisioning steps aren't performed, such as console setup and automatic registration. You must provide the appropriate user data if you want your generic operating system custom image to perform these steps. For more information, see Generic operating system custom images and Creating a generic operating system custom image.

Network boot of operating systems with Bare Metal Servers for VPC (GA)

Network boot of operating systems is now generally available. When you create a bare metal server on IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), you can select to network boot an operating system over the network. The operating system image can be hosted on your own server or on a public server. You can install the booted operating system to a disk or you can run the operating system without a disk. For more information, see Network booting your own operating system with Bare Metal Servers on VPC.

31 May 2024

Update firmware on Bare Metal Servers for VPC (beta)

With the new Update firmware action on Bare Metal Servers for VPC, you can see if a firmware update is available for your bare metal server and also initiate the update. You can use the UI, CLI, and API to update the firmware. In the UI, this action is only visible if the server is stopped and there is a firmware update available. It is recommended to back up your bare metal server before any firmware update. For more information, see Managing Bare Metal Servers for VPC.

Protocol state filtering on virtual network interfaces can be updated

Protocol state filtering works well if the packet forwarding path and the return path are the same, and if the packet forwarding path is never changed. However, the VPC routing table supports two-way ECMP routes. When a two-way ECMP route is configured, the forward path might differ from the return path and protocol state filtering can cause legitimate packets to drop. You can now disable protocol state filtering when intermittent routing issues occur. For more information, see Protocol state filtering mode.

Third-party image billing and metering (GA)

When you select a catalog image, you now have associated billing plans to choose from. Catalog images are billed in one of the following ways.

• Free trial
• Useage-based billing
• BYOL

30 May 2024

Next generation instance profiles available in Tokyo and Osaka regions (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a select availability offering in the Tokyo (jp-tok) and Osaka (jp-osa) regions, in addition to the Dallas (us-south), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), Madrid (eu-es), and Sydney (au-syd) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

Security group support for secondary IP addresses (GA)

You can now attach both primary and secondary IP addresses to a security group to refine the binding of security groups rules to a particular port IP instead of all IPs belonging to the port. Also, security group rules now support both source and destination on ingress and egress rules. This allows customers with multiple, secondary private IP addresses associated with a single vNIC to have the ability to apply security group rules to source and destination IP addresses, thus enabling finer granularity in security rules. This enhancement provides the capability to secure the primary IP different from the secondary IPs, and also applies to VIP prefixes (custom routes) used with a vNIC with IP spoofing disabled. For more information, see Applying security group rules to source and destination IP addresses.

29 May 2024

Confidential computing with Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) for Virtual Servers for VPC (select availability)

Confidential computing with Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX) protects your data through hardware-based server security by using isolated memory regions that are known as encrypted enclaves. This hardware-based computation helps protect your data from disclosure or modification. Which means that your sensitive data is encrypted while it is in virtual server instance memory by allowing applications to run in private memory space. To use SGX, you must install the SGX drivers and platform software on SGX-capable worker nodes. Then, design your app to run in an SGX environment. Confidential computing with Intel SGX for VPC is available only in US-South (Dallas) region. For more information, see Confidential computing with Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) for Virtual Servers for VPC.

14 May 2024

Next generation instance profiles available in Sydney region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a select availability offering in the Sydney (au-syd) region, in addition to the Dallas (us-south), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), and Madrid (eu-es) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

03 May 2024

Advertise routes to transit gateway and direct link for ingress routing integration

VPN for VPC now allows route advertisement so that on-prem CIDR blocks can be advertised to other VPCs without creating address prefixes. For more information, see Configuring route propagation for VPN gateways. For more information about migrating to advertised routes, see VPN for VPC migration to advertise routes.

Client VPN for VPC now allows route advertisement so that on-prem CIDR blocks can be advertised to other VPCs by creating a deliver action instead of a translate action. For more information, see Configuring route propagation for VPN servers. For more information about migrating to advertised routes, see Client VPN for VPC migration to advertise routes.

VPN for VPC: Configurable IKE identity and peer FQDN

When you configure a VPN gateway connection, you can now specify a peer FQDN as the peer gateway address. This allows you to use a dynamic public IP on the peer gateway. The VPN gateway connection also supports configuring the IKE identity with supported types: IPv4 address, FQDN, Hostname, and Key ID. The default local IKE identity value is the public IP address of the active member of the VPN gateway while the default peer IKE identity value is the peer gateway address or FQDN.

You can control which side initiates IKE protocol negotiations and rekeying processes on the VPN gateway connection. By default, the VPN gateway initiates IKE protocol negotiations and rekeying processes while also accepting IKE protocol negotiations or rekeying from the peer gateway. You can disable the VPN gateway from initiating IKE protocol negotiations and rekeying processes, and instead accept only the peer gateway to initiate IKE protocol negotiations and rekeying processes by setting Establish mode to Peer only. This enhancement enables you to connect the peer gateway behind a firewall and avoid conflicts in IKE negotiations. For more information, see Creating a VPN gateway.

Ubuntu 24.04 now available to provision virtual servers

Support for the Ubuntu 24.04 release, codenamed "Noble Numbat", is now available. You can use the ibm-ubuntu-24-04-minimal-amd64-1 stock image to provision virtual server instances. After the virtual server is created, you can also use it as a starting point for a custom image by creating an image from the boot volume of the virtual server.

02 May 2024

GPU l4 and l40S profiles now available in Brazil region (GA)

The l4 and l40S GPU profiles are now available in the São Paulo (br-sao) region. With this additional region, these profiles are now available in all regions. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

18 April 2024

Third-party image billing and metering (beta)

When you select a catalog image, you now have associated billing plans to choose from. Catalog images are billed in one of the following ways:

• Free trial
• Usage-based billing
• BYOL

09 April 2024

Generic operating system custom images with Virtual Server Instances and Bare Metal Servers for VPC (beta)

When you create a server on IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using an x86 profile, you can use an operating system that is not listed in IBM Cloud by specifying a generic operating system custom image. You can create this custom image by specifying one of the new operating systems with properties that indicate it is generic. When you provision a server by using a generic operating system custom image, most operating system-specific provisioning steps aren't performed, such as console setup and automatic registration. You must provide the appropriate user data if you want your generic operating system custom image to perform these steps. For more information, see Generic operating system custom images and Creating a generic operating system custom image.

Network boot of operating systems with Bare Metal Servers for VPC (beta)

When you create a bare metal server on IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), you can select to network boot an operating system over the network. The operating system image can be hosted on your own server or on a public server. You can install the booted operating system to a disk or you can run the operating system without a disk. For more information, see Network booting your own operating system with Bare Metal Servers on VPC.

08 April 2024

Next generation instance profiles available in Madrid region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a select availability offering in the Madrid (eu-es) region, in addition to the Dallas (us-south), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Washington DC (us-east), and Toronto (ca-tor) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

03 April 2024

Next generation instance profiles available in Toronto region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a select availability offering in the Toronto (ca-tor) region, in addition to the Washington DC (us-east), Dallas (us-south), London (eu-gb), and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

29 March 2024

Sharing DNS resolution for endpoint gateways across VPCs

When multiple VPCs are connected together using Transit Gateway, Direct Link, or other connectivity options, a VPC in the connected topology can now be enabled as a DNS hub to centralize the DNS resolution for Virtual Private Endpoint (VPE) gateways. For more information, see About DNS sharing for VPE gateways.

28 March 2024

VMware ESXi 7 End of Market for Bare Metal for VPC

VMware ESXi image on Bare Metal Servers for VPC will no longer be available when you provision a bare metal for VPC servers. If looking to deploy a VMware solution in VPC, consider provisioning VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) through IBM Cloud VMware Solutions. For more information about this solution, see VMware Cloud Foundation overview. For more information on the updated packaging and pricing for VMware® portfolio, see Packaging and pricing for VMware by Broadcom.

Next generation instance profiles available in Washington DC region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a select availability offering in the Washington DC (us-east) region, in addition to the Dallas (us-south), London (eu-gb), and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

26 March 2024

Security group support for secondary IP addresses (select availability)

Accounts that are granted special approval to preview this feature can now attach both primary and secondary IP addresses to a security group to refine the binding of security groups rules to a particular port IP instead of all IPs belonging to the port. Also, security group rules now support both source and destination on ingress and egress rules. This allows customers with multiple, secondary private IP addresses associated with a single vNIC to have the ability to apply security group rules to source and destination IP addresses, thus enabling finer granularity in security rules. This enhancement provides the capability to secure the primary IP different from the secondary IPs, and also applies to VIP prefixes (custom routes) used with a vNIC with IP spoofing disabled. For more information, see Applying security group rules to source and destination IP addresses.

25 March 2024

Reservations for VPC (GA)

Reservations for VPC are now GA (generally available). A reservation is a great option if you want guaranteed resources for future deployments and cost savings. You can choose between either a 1 or 3-year contract term for your reservation. Reservations are available the Dallas (us-south), Washington DC (us-east), São Paulo (br-sao), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), Osaka (jp-osa), Tokyo (jp-tok), and Sydney (au-syd) multizone regions (MZRs). For more information, see About reservations for VPC.

22 March 2024

Private Path Services for VPC (Beta)

Accounts that are granted special approval to preview this feature can now create a Private Path service and Private Path network load balancer.

Private Path services provide private connectivity for IBM Cloud and third-party services. A Private Path service requires a Private Path network load balancer to deploy a service on IBM Cloud and a Virtual Private Endpoint (VPE) gateway for consumers to connect to the service. Traffic stays on the IBM Cloud backbone without traversing the public internet.

For more information, see the Private Path solution guide. If you are interested in getting early access to this beta offering, contact your IBM Support representative.

21 March 2024

UI Enhancement to SSH Keys

The UI process for uploading SSH keys is improved where you Select SSH key input method. Improvements were made to the ability to copy and paste, drag and drop, and the upload buttons. Previously, these three actions were all individually located. These actions are now combined to use the same space within the UI.

15 March 2024

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-15 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-15, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

You can also set the expiry of contract during signature. Contract signature is an optional feature that can be used with the contract. You can choose to sign a contract before it is passed as input. Contracts that are in plain text or encrypted can be signed. Certificate can also be parsed as base64 string. For more information, see Contract Signature

Validation of the contract signature is done by the Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC image. You can validate the certificates that you download for contract encryption and attestation. For more information, see Validating the Certificates

Updated workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-15. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

From April 15, only the latest IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image will be available on IBM Cloud GUI. For more information, see Downloading the encryption certificate and extracting the public key

12 March 2024

Virtual Network Interfaces for VPC

A new feature is generally available in the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service that expands the support for virtual network interfaces. The following features are available.

• Virtual network interfaces have an independent lifecycle, which means that when you delete a resource to which the virtual network interface is attached, the virtual network interface persists and retains its IP address.
• New instances and bare metal servers can be created with virtual network interfaces attached to new child resources called network attachments.
• Virtual network interfaces support secondary IP addresses.
• For compatibility with existing clients, instances and bare metal servers with virtual network interfaces include a read-only representation of their network attachments and virtual network interfaces as legacy network interface child resources.
• For instances and bare metal servers with virtual network interfaces, the IAM permissions for options to allow IP spoofing or disable infrastructure NAT are managed on their attached virtual network interfaces.
• Flow log collectors can target instance network attachments and virtual network interfaces.

You can choose to defer access to this feature through IBM Support. Users in an account that has deferred access will not be able to create instances or bare metal servers with virtual network interfaces. If you need more time to assess, remediate, and test changes for virtual network interfaces, request deferral for your production accounts while you complete the mitigations using your test accounts.

GPU l4 and l40S profiles now available in US South region

The l4 and l40S GPU profiles are now available Dallas (us-south) region. For the l4 profiles, these regions are in addition to Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), Sydney (au-syd), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. For the l40S profiles, this region is in addition to Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), Sydney (au-syd), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

11 March 2024

GPU l40S profiles now available in Canada and United Kingdom regions

The l40S GPU profiles are now available in the Toronto (ca-tor) and London (eu-gb) regions. These regions are in addition to Washington DC (us-east), Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), Sydney (au-syd), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

07 March 2024

UI update for Block storage

When you create a Block Storage for VPC volume from the Block storage volumes for VPC list, you can now choose to import data from a snapshot and to apply a backup policy as part of the new Optional configurations section.

06 March 2024

GPU l4 and l40S profiles now available in Washington DC (us-east) region

The l4 and l40S GPU profiles are now available in the Washington DC (us-east) region. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

29 February 2024

UI navigation change to Auto scale

Previously, Auto scale was found in VPC Infrastructure > Auto scale in the IBM Console navigation. This path is now changed. The new navigation path is VPC Infrastructure > Compute.

27 February 2024

GPU l40S profiles with PCIe now available

New l40S GPU profiles that include NVIDIA's L40S 48GB GPU are now available in the Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), Sydney (au-syd), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

GPU l4 profiles now available

New l4 GPU profiles that include NVIDIA's L4 24GB GPU are now available in the Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Madrid (eu-es), Sydney (au-syd), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

23 February 2024

London 1 AZ for bare metal servers

The London 1 availability zone (AZ) is now available for Bare Metal Servers for VPC.

20 February 2024

Virtual Network Interfaces for VPC (Select availability)

Accounts that have been granted special approval can preview a new feature in the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service that expands the support for virtual network interfaces. The following features are available.

• Virtual network interfaces have an independent lifecycle, which means that when you delete a resource to which the virtual network interface is attached, the virtual network interface persists and retains its IP address.
• New instances and bare metal servers can be created with virtual network interfaces attached to new child resources called network attachments.
• Virtual network interfaces support secondary IP addresses.
• For compatibility with existing clients, instances and bare metal servers with virtual network interfaces include a read-only representation of their network attachments and virtual network interfaces as legacy network interface child resources.
• For instances and bare metal servers with virtual network interfaces, the IAM permissions for options to allow IP spoofing or disable infrastructure NAT are managed on their attached virtual network interfaces.
• Flow log collectors can target instance network attachments and virtual network interfaces.

If you have automation for managing your virtual network interfaces, bare metal servers, and file share mount targets, and you are not interested in expanded support for virtual network interfaces, you'll have the option to opt out when the feature becomes generally available.

Next generation instance profiles available in Frankfurt (eu-de) region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a select availability offering in the Frankfurt (eu-de) region, in addition to the Dallas (us-south) and London (eu-gb) regions. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

13 February 2024

Dashboard template IDs

Template IDs and dashboard names for Virtual server for VPC, Flow logs for VPC, and VPC Infrastructure Service Resource Quota Overview are changed.

• VPC service metric definitions dashboard names:
  • VPC VSI Gen 2 Overview is changed to Virtual Server for VPC Overview
  • VPC Flow Logs Overview is changed to Flow Logs for VPC Overview
  • VPC Resource Quota Overview is changed to VPC Infrastructure Service Resource Quota Overview
• VPC virtual server instances metrics definitions:
  • ibm_resource_name is changed to ibm_is_resource_name
• Monitoring flow logs for VPC metrics:
  • ibm_flow_log_collector_instance is changed to ibm_is_flow_log_collector_instance
• VPC Infrastructure Service Resource Quota Overview:
  • ibm_secondary_resource_id is changed to ibm_is_secondary_resource_id
  • ibm_resource_quota_name is changed to ibm_is_resource_quota_name

For more information, see IBM Cloud VPC monitoring dashboards.

07 February 2024

Updated workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-14. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

UI enhancement: New SAP Certified filter when selecting an instance profile

When provisioning a virtual server, you can now use the SAP Certified filter on the Select an instance profile page to narrow the results to include only the available SAP profiles (SAP HANA, SAP NetWeaver, or SAP Business One). When the SAP Certified filter is selected, the profile results display the SAP certification status for the specific SAP enabled profiles.

06 February 2024

New Madrid (eu-es) region for ux2d profiles (GA)

The Ultra High Memory family of profiles are now available in the Madrid (eu-es) region. The addition of this region makes the ux2d profiles available in all regions. For more information, see the Ultra High Memory profile information. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

24 January 2024

Next generation instance profiles available in London (eu-gb) region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are now available as a Select Availability offering in the London (eu-gb) region, in addition to the Dallas (us-south) region. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

16 January 2024

Reservations for VPC (select availability)

You can now provision reservations for VPC. A reservation is a great option if you want guaranteed resources for future deployments and cost savings. You can choose between either a 1 or 3-year contract term for your reservation. Reservations are available in only the Sydney (au-syd) region. For more information, see About reservations for VPC.

11 January 2024

UI enhancement to VPC download button

Previously, when you downloaded a list of resources from a table, you could download only the current page if the resource list length was more than 200 records. With this UI enhancement, you can now download all the pages regardless of length of the resource list.

19 December 2023

Corrected events

The following table shows activity tracker events that have been corrected.

15 December 2023

IBM Wazi as a Service and LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) dedicated host (select availability)

You can now create dedicated hosts with s390x memory profiles in the Madrid (eu-es) and Dallas (us-south) regions to carve out a single-tenant compute node and create virtual server instances according to your needs. For more information, see s390x dedicated host profiles and Creating dedicated hosts and groups.

VPC route advertisement to Direct Link and Transit Gateway

You can now advertise routes in VPC ingress routing tables to Direct Link, Transit Gateway, or both. For more information, see VPC routing tables and routes.

14 December 2023

Tokyo 2 AZ for bare metal servers

The Tokyo 2 availability zone (AZ) is now available for Bare Metal Servers for VPC.

12 December 2023

File Storage for VPC - Cross-region Replication

Customers who have VPCs in multiple regions in the same geography can now create replicas of their file shares in another zone of a different region. For more information, see About file share replication.

08 December 2023

GPU A100 profiles with PCIe now available

Two additional a100 GPU profiles that include NVIDIA's A100 PCIe GPU are now available in the Washington DC (us-east), Tokyo (jp-tok), and London (eu-gb) regions. For more information, see GPU x86-64 instance profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

05 December 2023

Snapshot consistency groups and consistency group backups

You can now create a snapshot consistency group to capture snapshots of multiple block storage volumes that are attached to a virtual server instance. You can include or exclude the boot volume. Instance storage is not included. You can later use the individual snapshots in the consistency group to restore multiple volumes of a virtual server instance. You can automate the creation and retention of consistency group snapshots with the Backup service. For more information, see Snapshot consistency groups and About Backup for VPC.

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-14 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-14, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

01 December 2023

Reserved Capacity for VPC (Beta)

You can now reserve capacity for VPC. Reserved capacity is a great option if you want guaranteed resources for future deployments and cost savings. You can choose between either a 1 or 3-year contract term for your reserved capacity. For more information, see About Reserved Capacity for VPC.

16 November 2023

Client VPN for VPC: Automate the client certificate authentication process for private certificates

As a VPN server administrator, you were required to download the client profile, manually insert the private certificate into the client profile, and, finally, distribute it to users. Now, when a private certificate is used for client authentication, you can download the client profile with the merged private certificate and key for all or selected private certificates. There is also no need for the VPN client user to modify their client profile manually. For more information, see Setting up a client VPN environment and connecting to a VPN server.

Encryption in transit is now available in Madrid (eu-es) region

Encryption in transit for File Storage for VPC is now available in the Madrid (eu-es) region in IBM Cloud. For more information, see Encryption in transit.

15 November 2023

GPU A100 profile available on Intel Ice Lake hardware in Washington DC (us-east) region (select availability)

The GPU a100 profile is now availableon the Intel®'s quad processor Xeon® Gold 6342 Ice Lake with 96 cores that are running at a base speed of 2.8 GHz and an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz. The Ice Lake processor is available only in the Washington DC (us-east) region. For more information, see the GPU profile family documentation.

13 November 2023

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-13 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-13, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

You can attach multiple volumes when you bring up the virtual server instance. For more information, see The workload - volumes subsection, and The env - volumes subsection.

Updated workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build

The workload section for Hyper Protect Secure Build is updated based on the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-13. For more information, see Configuring and using Hyper Protect Secure Build in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

10 November 2023

IBM Wazi as a Service available in Dallas (us-south) region

IBM Wazi as a Service (Wazi aaS) is now available in the Dallas (us-south) region in IBM Cloud. For more information, see IBM Wazi as a Service product page.

Dallas (us-south) region is now available for IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud

You can create IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud VPC instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in the Dallas (us-south) region, in addition to Tokyo (jp-tok), São Paulo (br-sao), Madrid (eu-es), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), and Washington DC (us-east) regions. To create IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud VPC instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances, and IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image. A valid contract is required for creating an instance. For more information, see About the contract.

Dallas (us-south) region is now available for LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture)

You can now create virtual server instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in IBM Cloud in the Dallas (us-south) region, in addition to Tokyo (jp-tok), São Paulo (br-sao), Madrid (eu-es), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), and Washington DC (us-east) regions. For more information about available LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) profiles, see s390x instance profiles. To create instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances by using the UI.

UI enhancement: architecture and image selection when provisioning

When you create resources such as virtual server instances, bare metal servers, and instance templates, the image selection option is now available in an enhanced side panel when you click Change image. For virtual server instances and instance templates, you can select from stock images, custom images, catalog images, snapshots, and existing volumes. For bare metal servers, you can select from stock images and custom images. Additionally, architecture selection is now included on the image side panel.

24 October 2023

Security group integration for network load balancers

For enhanced security, network load balancers can now be associated with security groups. You can associate one or more security groups with a new network load balancer when creating it, as well as associate security groups with your existing network load balancers. For more information, see Integrating an IBM Cloud Network Load Balancer for VPC with security groups.

Very High Memory profiles available in all regions (GA)

The Very High Memory family of profiles are now available in the Madrid (eu-es) region. This makes the vx2d profiles available in all regions. For more information about the Very High Memory profile family, see Very High Memory. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

12 October 2023

VPNs for VPC: Diagnose unhealthy VPN gateways and servers

When you see an existing VPN gateway or server in a degraded or faulted state, you can now diagnose the issue. You are presented with reasons for the state and actions to resolve the issue. For more information, see Diagnosing VPN gateway health, Diagnosing VPN gateway connection health, and Diagnosing VPN server health.

Next generation instance profiles available in Dallas (us-south) region (select availability)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are available as a Select Availability offering in the Dallas (us-south) region. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles. In the Balanced family, see the bx3d profiles tab. In the Compute family, see the cx3d profiles tab. In the Memory family, see the mx3d profiles tab. 3rd generation dedicated host profiles are also available. For more information, see bx3d, cx3d, and mx3d profiles in x86-64 dedicated host profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

UI enhancements

The following enhancements were made to the VPC UI.

• General fixes and updates
• VPN status reason and suspended status
• VPN Route Advertisement

02 October 2023

New regions for ux2d profiles

The Ultra High Memory family of profiles are now available in the São Paulo (br-sao), Tokyo (jp-tok), Osaka (jp-osa), and Sydney (au-syd) regions. For more information, see the Ultra High Memory profile information. For more information about the Multizone regions, Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

29 September 2023

Backup as a Service Enterprise enablement

As an enterprise account administrator, you can view and manage the backup policies and plans for the subaccounts for compliance reporting and billing from one place. Enterprise account users can see all backup policies and associated jobs. They can also see the reference of the backup snapshot that is created in the subaccount. Subaccounts can create and manage their backups as before. For more information, see About Backup for VPC.

22 September 2023

IBM Wazi as a Service available in Madrid (eu-es) region

IBM Wazi as a Service (Wazi aaS) is now available in the Madrid (eu-es) region in IBM Cloud. For more information, see IBM Wazi as a Service product page.

21 September 2023

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud

You can now create IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud VPC instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in the Madrid (eu-es) region, in addition to São Paulo (br-sao), Toronto (ca-tor), Tokyo (jp-tok), and Washington DC (us-east) regions. To create IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud VPC instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances, and IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image. A valid contract is required for creating an instance. For more information, see About the contract.

LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture)

You can now create virtual server instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in IBM Cloud in the Madrid (eu-es) region, in addition to Tokyo (jp-tok), São Paulo (br-sao), Toronto (ca-tor), and London (eu-gb) regions. For more information about available LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) profiles, see s390x instance profiles. To create instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances by using the UI.

05 September 2023

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-12 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-12, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

You can now roll or rotate the seeds that are used in the contract to improve the security posture or if the seed is compromised. For more information, see The workload - volumes subsection, and The env - volumes subsection.

Ultra High Memory profiles are now available in the London (eu-gb) region

The Ultra High Memory profile family (ux2d) is now available in the United Kingdome (London) region. For more information about this profile family, see Ultra High Memory. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

31 August 2023

Bare metal network hardware

Bare metal servers now use upgraded network cards. For network workloads that leverage very high packets per second for smaller packets, you can update your drivers to the latest available Pensando device drivers. For more information, see Special considerations for bare metal network performance upgrade and AMD Pensando Support.

File Storage for Bare metal servers for VPC

File Storage for VPC is now supported by Bare Metal Servers for VPC. Users can leverage file storage as an addition or alternative to local NVMe drives. About File Storage for VPC.

25 August 2023

Next generation instance profiles (Beta)

The 3rd generation of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are available as a beta offering to select customers. This new generation features virtual server profile families hosted exclusively on 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to provide the most powerful and performant general-purpose profiles available. For more information, see Next generation instance profiles and the bx3d and mx3d profiles in the Balanced and Memory profile families.

22 August 2023

VPC Status History

You can now customize notification settings for your VPC dashboard. When status history is enabled, your notification history is retained to help you find old error messages or track down when the creation or deletion of a resource occurred. To enable Status History, make sure that your browser alllows local storage access. For more information, see Enabling local storage in your browser.

15 August 2023

Metadata Instance identity certificates

You can now use the instance identity access token and a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to create an instance identity certificate with the Metadata API. For more information, see Generating an instance identity certificate by using an instance identity access token. Instance identity certificates can be used when the traffic between an authorized client and the mounted file share is encrypted in transit.

08 August 2023

File Storage for VPC (GA)

NFS-based file shares for a zone within a region are now generally available. You can create and share file storage over multiple virtual service instances within the same zone across multiple VPCs. For more information about this service, see About File Storage for VPC.

14 July 2023

Very High Memory (vx2d) profile family now available in all regions (GA)

The vx2d profile is now available in the São Paulo (br-sao) region. Adding this region makes this profile family available in all regions. For more information about the Very High Memory profile family, see Very High Memory. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

11 July 2023

Image lifecycle management for custom images (GA)

This image lifecycle management feature is now generally available. You can use the UI, CLI, and API to manage the lifecycle of your custom images with the following three statuses. You can move the image back and forth through all the statuses. You can also schedule status changes to manage the entire lifecycle of the image. For more information, see Custom image lifecycle in Getting started with custom images.

• available: The image can be used to create an instance.
• deprecated: The image can be used to create an instance. Using the deprecated status can discourage use of the image before the status changes to obsolete.
• obsolete: The image can't be used to create an instance.

27 June 2023

Snapshots for VPC Cross Regional Copy GA

Customers can now create a copy of a snapshot in a different region, and later use that copy to restore a volume in the new region. This feature can be beneficial in disaster recovery scenarios when the customer needs to start their virtual server instance and data volumes in a different region. Customers can also use the remote copy to create storage volumes in a new region and expand their VPC in new locations. For more information, see Cross Regional Snapshot copies.

Backup for VPC Cross Regional Copy (GA)

Customers can now save a copy of their backup in a different region. Customers can copy the backup snapshot to another region manually or add the copy option to their backup policy plans. Customers can manage and use the cross-regional copy in the target region independently from the parent volume or the original backup. For more information, see Cross Regional backup copies.

22 June 2023

New Ed25519 SSH key type is available

The Ed25519 SSH key type is a new, supported SSH key type and can be used as an alternative to the RSA SSH key type. The Ed25519 SSH key can be used with Linux operating systems, but is not supported for Windows or VMware images. For more information, see Getting started with SSH keys and Managing SSH Keys.

Madrid multi zone region (MZR)

A new MZR is available for VPC and Classic infrastructures. Classic Virtual Servers will not be available in the Madrid MZR. The Madrid (eu-es) region supports only dedicated host profiles with instance storage. For more information, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment, Setting up access to classic infrastructure, and Dedicated host profiles.

20 June 2023

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-11 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-11, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Support for customer-managed keys through integration with Hyper Protect Crypto Services

• Without the feature, the data volume that you attach to your instance is encrypted automatically with a LUKS passphrase generated by using the two seeds from the workload - volumes and env - volumes sections of the contract. Starting from the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-11, Hyper Protect Virtual Servers support integration with the key management service (KMS) Hyper Protect Crypto Services. You can enable the integration by providing KMS configurations in the contract. Your Hyper Protect Virtual Server instance calls Hyper Protect Crypto Services to generate a random value as the third seed and wrap it with your root key. The wrapped seed is stored in the metadata partition of your data volume. The LUKS passphrase is generated by using three seeds - the seed in the metadata partition (unwrapped first) and the two seeds from the contract. For more information about how the integration works and detailed instructions, see Securing your data.

Deploying multiple containers

• In the workload section of the contract, you can define the workload via Pod descriptors. Each pod can contain one or more container definitions. Previously, only one container described by docker compose was supported. For more information about using Pod descriptors, see the play subsection. Container images described by Pod descriptors can be validated by RedHat Simple Signing.

Changes to the attestation document

• In the attestation document se-checksums.txt, user-data.decrypted is removed, and Machine Type/Plant/Serial (the information required to identify the host machine) is added. For more information, see Attestation.

Instance group integration with network load balancers (GA)

Network Load Balancer for VPC is now integrated with instance groups to improve pool member scaling. When you create or update an instance group for auto scaling, you can now specify the Network Load Balancer pool for the instance group to manage. For more information see Creating an instance group for auto scaling.

Access control modes and granular authorization for File Storage for VPC file shares (beta)

For users with accounts that have access to file shares, you can now specify an access control mode to either restrict mounting a file share to a specific virtual server instance in the VPC or allow VPC-wide file share mounting. File share mount targets that were created before 20-June-2023 have a default of VPC-wide file share mounting. File shares that are created after that date can specify security group access control mode to restrict access to a specific instance. For this option, file shares must be based on the dp2 profile. From the UI, CLI, or API, you set the access control mode when you create or update file shares, and can see the setting when you list file shares and in the file share details. When you create a mount target for a file share with security group access mode, you can specify a virtual network interface to be created and attached to the mount target with a security group. For the virtual network interface, you can specify an existing reserved IP, or specify a subnet and allow the system to assign an IP address. When the mount target is attached and the share is mounted, the virtual network interface performs security group policy check to ensure only authorized virtual server instances can communicate with the share. For more information, see Mount targets for file shares.

Data encryption in transit for file shares (beta)

For users with accounts that have access to file shares, you can enable secure end-to-end encryption of your data when using security group based access control on file shares and mount targets with virtual network interfaces. The traffic between the authorized virtual server and the file share can optionally be IPsec encapsulated by the client. By using an Internet Security Protocol (IPsec), you can establish an encrypted mount connection between the virtual server instance and a file share with the dp2 profile. The IBM Cloud® file service provides a mount helper utility to automate the complex tasks of configuring and maintaining the connection. For more information, see Encryption in transit - Securing mount connections between file share and host.

Virtual network interface (beta)

Virtual network interfaces are now available in a beta release for use with file share mount targets. For more information see About virtual network interfaces.

16 June 2023

VPC routing table authorizations

You can use the new VPC routing table authorizations to allow users to administer VPC routing tables but not allow them to administer the broader VPC. Routing table operations were updated to check for these new authorizations, instead of the broader VPC authorizations. The VPC Administrator, Editor, Operator, and Viewer IAM access roles were updated so that users with those roles function as before. However, custom roles that require access to routing tables must be updated. For more information, see Managing IAM access for VPC Infrastructure Services.

15 June 2023

New regions available for Ultra High Memory profiles:

Ultra High Memory (ux2d) profiles are now available in the Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions. For more information, see the Ultra High Memory profiles documentation. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

08 June 2023

New stock images for bare metal servers

The following stock images are now available for bare metal servers:

• CentOS 7.x is now supported as an image when you provision a bare metal server.
• CentOS Stream 9.x is now supported as an image when you provision a bare metal server. For more information, see Bare metal server images.

01 June 2023

UI Enhancement to the List view

You can now export table data with the current table column format. The supported export formats are CSV and Microsoft Excel.

30 May 2023

File Storage for VPC file share activity tracker event name changes (beta)

For users with accounts that have access to file shares, when making API requests using a version query parameter of 2023-05-30 or later, the shares targets property was changed to mount_targets. This change affects file share Activity Tracker events. Events generated when creating, listing, retrieving, deleting, and updating mount targets for a file share are now is.share.mount-target.create, is.share.mount-target.list,is.share.mount-target.read, is.share.mount-target.delete, and is.share.mount-target.update. Events for is.share.target.create, is.share.target.list, is.share.target.read, is.share.target.delete, and is.share.target.update are deprecated and will be removed in a future API release per the VPC beta API versioning policy.

19 May 2023

Removal of weak VPN for VPC ciphers

Effective 18 May 2023, the following VPN IKE and IPsec ciphers are now removed:

• Authentication algorithms md5 and sha1
• Encryption algorithm triple_des
• Diffie–Hellman groups 2 and 5

After this date, you cannot create an IKE/IPsec policy or connection that includes a weak cipher, but you can still upgrade weak cipher suites on an existing policy or connection. Starting 10 July 2023, any existing connections with customized IKE or IPsec policies that contain weak ciphers will be disabled, and any connections with auto IKE or IPsec policies that were created before September 20, 2022 will be forced to upgrade to the enhanced auto-negotiation policy.

11 May 2023

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-10

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-10, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

9 May 2023

New -a100 GPU profile is available (select availability)

There is a new profile available for customers with special approval to preview this service that is for provisioning instances based on NVIDIA's A100 Amperere GPU attached to a single virtual server instance. The gx2-80x1280x8a100 profile supports artificial intelligence and machine language frameworks and includes instance storage. Only Redhat and Ubuntu are supported for this profile. This profile is currently only available in the Washington DC (us-east) region. For more information, see GPU profiles. To request access to this profile, you must open a support case.

6 April 2023

Image lifecycle management for custom images (beta)

For customers with special access to this feature, you can use the UI, CLI, and API to manage the lifecycle of your custom images with the following three statuses. You can move the image back and forth through all the statuses. You can also schedule status changes to manage the entire lifecycle of the image. For more information, see Custom image lifecycle in Getting started with custom images.

• available: The image can be used to create an instance.
• deprecated: The image can be used to create an instance. Using the deprecated status can discourage use of the image before the status changes to obsolete.
• obsolete: The image can't be used to create an instance.

4 April 2023

File Storage for VPC high-performance profile (beta)

For customers with special access to this feature, you can now create file shares by using the dp2 high-performance profile. This profile provides higher IOPS and greater capacity than earlier profiles. You can also modify existing file shares to use this profile. For more information, see the file share profiles overview.

31 March 2023

New network latency dashboard to view latency between zones in a multi-zone region (MZR)

Not only can you view inter-region latency metrics, but you can now view inter-AZ metrics between all regions and availability zones (AZs) to help you plan the optimal selection for your cloud deployment. To view performance metrics, see the Network latency dashboards.

29 March 2023

VCPU manufacturer support for instances and dedicated hosts (select availability)

For accounts authorized to preview this functionality, you can now choose between profiles from different processor manufacturers when you provision an instance or dedicated host in the Toronto (ca-tor) region. For more information, see x86-64 instance profiles, Dedicated host profiles.

28 March 2023

Private DNS zones for network load balancers

You can now use IBM Cloud Application and Network Load Balancers for VPC to bind DNS zones from IBM Cloud DNS Services, which you can use to move all DNS resolutions into private networks. Private DNS zones are resolvable only on IBM Cloud, and only from explicitly permitted networks in an account or with cross account access. For more information, see Integrating a load balancer with IBM Cloud DNS Services.

Enhancements to viewing profiles - number of supported network interfaces

In IBM Cloud console, when you click View all profiles on the Create virtual server instance page, the Bandwidth column values include a tooltip. The tooltip now includes the number of network interfaces that can be attached for the profile. A similar feature is now available in the API when you list instance profiles. For more information, see Network interface configuration for instance profiles.

23 March 2023

New network latency dashboard

Provides visibility into network latency between all regions to help you plan the optimal selection for your cloud deployment and plan for scenarios, such as data residency and performance. This dashboard provides the average network round-trip latency (round-trip time or RTT) for all pairs of regions in IBM Cloud over a 30-day period.

You can view and monitor performance in the following IBM Cloud regions: Dallas (us-south), Toronto (ca-tor), Washington DC (us-east), Frankfurt (eu-de), London (eu-gb), Osaka (jp-osa), Sydney (au-syd), Tokyo (jp-tok), and São Paulo (br-sao).

To view performance metrics, see the Network latency dashboard.

21 March 2023

Instance provision by volume

You can now reuse an existing boot volume to provision a virtual server instance. The specified volume must be unattached, be in the same zone as the instance profile, and must have an operating system with the same architecture as the instance profile. By default, a boot volume that was created as part of provisioning a virtual server instance is deleted when the instance is deleted. You can control this behavior when you create or update an instance. For more information, see Creating virtual server instances, and Managing virtual server instances.

Designating VPC route priority

When multiple VPC routes exist for a destination, you can now control the priority of these routes (from 0 to 4). New and existing routes, which are created without a priority value, are automatically set to the default priority (2). Smaller values have higher priority. For more information, see Determining route preference.

The route priority is considered on identical destinations only.

Modifying the next hop for VPC routes

You can now update the next-hop of a VPC route. For more information, see Creating a route.

20 March 2023

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-9 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-9, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Two partitions in new data volume

• For new Hyper Protect Virtual Servers instances, the data volume is partitioned into two parts. The first partition (100Mib) is reserved for internal metadata; the second partition remains as the data volume for workload. Only new volumes are partitioned, and you can't use the partitioned volume with an older version of the HPCR image. Provisioning with an existing encrypted volume also works. The difference is that the existing volume does not get partitioned, and you can also go back to an older image with this volume.

Support for using a dynamic registry reference

• There exist use cases in which the registry is not known when the workload section is pre-encrypted, for example, when the workload provider wants to allow the deployer to use a registry mirror or a private container registry. In such a case, it's possible to dynamically override the registry and the pull credentials - which is a coordinated effort between the workload provider and the deployer. For more information, see Using a dynamic registry reference.

16 March 2023

Client-to-site VPN server private certificate support

VPN servers now support the use of Secrets Manager private certificates. Private certificates are SSL/TLS certificates that you can sign, issue, and manage in the Secrets Manager service. For VPN server considerations, see Using a private certificate. For Secrets Manager information, see Creating a private certificate.

10 March 2023

Client-server timeout for application load balancers

You can now configure the client and server timeout parameters for IBM Cloud Application Load Balancer for VPC by using the UI, CLI, and API. The maximum timeout period for each listener is 2 hours, and the minimum is 50 seconds. If you need a timeout amount greater than 2 hours, open a support case with IBM Support. For more information about setting the client and server timeout period, refer to Creating an application load balancer. This functionality is only available for application load balancers.

14 February 2023

VPC instance metadata communication protocol and hop limit

You can now control the communication protocol and hop limit for IP response packets that are used by the VPC Instance Metadata service. When you provision or update an instance, use the new Secure access setting to specify either http (default) or https (secure access) communication. In addition, use the new Hop limit setting to specify a value between 1 (default) and 64. Both of these settings apply only when the metadata service is enabled. For more information, see Configure metadata settings by using the UI.

Hyper Protect Secure Build

You can now use Hyper Protect Secure Build to securely build an Open Container Initiative (OCI) image in Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC. You can push the image to DockerHub or IBM Cloud Container Registry (ICR). Later, you can pull the image from the registry to provision it in another Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC instance. You can also pull SLES BaseContainerImages (BCI) from the SUSE registry, and use the images to provision Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC instances.

9 February 2023

Export custom images (Beta)

For accounts that are authorized to preview this feature, you can now export custom images to IBM Cloud Object Storage. For more information, see Exporting a custom image to IBM Cloud Object Storage (Beta).

7 February 2023

Block Storage fast restore snapshots

You can now restore a fully provisioned volume with all its data from a snapshot by using a fast restore snapshot clone. You can use fast restor to restore a volume more quickly than restoring from a regular snapshot. To create the clone, you specify a zone or zones in the same region as the source snapshot. The clone is used to automatically restore a volume with all of its data in the zone where the clone exists. For more information, see Restoring a volume by using fast restore.

Extra security for VPC snapshots (closed beta)

For customers with special access to this security beta feature, data isolation is provided to store snapshots created from your dedicated hosts. With data isolation extra security, your data is encrypted at rest with a unique key and access to your data is protected by a private firewall.

3 February 2023

Images for VPC UI Updates

Previously, the path to custom images was VPC Infrastructure > Compute > Custom Images. The new path is VPC Infrastructure > Compute > Images. The new page is Images for VPC and now has a tab for each type of image:

• Custom images
• Stock images
• Catalog images

31 January 2023

Secure boot with Trusted Plaform Module (TPM) (select availability)

Secure boot makes sure that your server starts with trusted software by verifying the signatures for all code in the boot process. Trusted Platform Module (TPM) provides hardware-based security functions. With supporting software, TPM helps maintain platform integrity and generates cryptographic keys. For more information, see Secure boot with Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

30 January 2023

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-8 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-8, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Using Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC in a private network

• You can use your Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC instance in private-only network configurations, in which the VPC doesn't have a public gateway, and the virtual server instance doesn't have a floating IP. You can connect to private endpoints of other services, including container registry and IBM Log Analysis. The prerequisite is that you need a DNS server that is attached to your virtual server instance. You don't need to do any extra configurations.

Security enhancement to disk encryption verification

• To address Denial-of-Service attacks, the requests to verify disk encryption status are throttled at three per five minutes.

27 January 2023

Context-based restrictions

Context-based restrictions are now available for IBM Cloud VPC resources. With context-based restrictions, account owners and administrators can define and enforce network access policies. For more information, see Protecting Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Infrastructure Services with context-based restrictions.

17 January 2023

Application Load Balancer and VPN for VPC

As a reminder, end of support for IBM Cloud Certificate Manager was 31 December 2022. Remaining instances of Certificate Manager were deleted. If any user-provided Ingress secrets are stored in Certificate Manager, they are no longer valid.

End of support (EOS) for deprecated VPN for VPC IKE and IPsec ciphers

On 20 September 2022, the following VPN IKE and IPsec ciphers were deprecated:

• Authentication algorithms md5 and sha1
• Encryption algorithm triple_des
• Diffie–Hellman groups 2 and 5

Effective today, these ciphers are no longer supported in the UI and EOS for use with the CLI and API is forthcoming. If you didn't upgrade to more secure ciphers, do so now.

20 December 2022

Instance provision by volume (Beta)

By default, when a virtual server instance is deleted attached boot volumes are deleted. You can disable this behavior, causing the boot volume to instead be detached when the virtual server instance is deleted. You can then attach the boot volume to a new virtual server instance. For more information, see Creating virtual server instances, Creating VPC resources with CLI and API, and Managing virtual server instances.

Backup for VPC

The backup policy jobs feature, previously released as a Beta, is now generally available. You can now view all backup policy jobs or details of a single job from the UI, CLI, or API. A backup policy job is triggered when a scheduled backup snapshot is being created or deleted. If the create or delete action is successful, the job contains information about the backup snapshot that was created or deleted. If the job ran unsuccessfully, the job contains the reason for the failure. For more information, see Viewing backup jobs.

17 December 2022

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-7 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-7, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Certificate revocation list

• Starting from ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-7-encrypt.crt and ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-7-attestation.crt, the certificates contain Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Distribution Points. You can use the CRL to verify that your certificates are valid (not revoked). For more information, see Certificate revocation list.

15 December 2022

Bare metal servers now support custom images

You can now create custom images to use on your bare metal servers. For more information, see Custom image considerations and Bare metal server considerations.

13 December 2022

Volume creation from a Block Storage snapshot

You can now use the UI and CLI, in addition to the VPC API, to create a stand-alone Block Storage volume from a snapshot. Stand-alone data volumes can be attached to a virtual server instance at any time. You can select a snapshot of a boot volume and use it to boot a new virtual server instance. For more information, see Restore a stand-alone data volume from a snapshot.

Block Storage volume health states

You can now view the health state of a Block Storage volume from the UI, CLI, and API. Health indicated whether a volume is performing as expected or degraded. You can view health status and reasons from the list of volumes and volume details, and when you create and updating volumes. For more information, see Block Storage volume health states.

14 November 2022

IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-6 updates

For the IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image version ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-6, new certificates are available.

• Attestation certificate
• Encryption certificate
• Intermediate certificate

Logging for Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC

• Apart from IBM Log Analysis, you can now configure logging with a generic syslog backend. For more information, see Logging for Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC.

Security claims on disks encryption

• Both the root disk and data disks in the Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for VPC instance are configured with Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) Encryption. You can verify the encryption status by checking related messages in the log. For more information, see Verifying disk encryption status.

11 November 2022

Access management tags to manage VPC resources

You can now use access management tags to control access to VPC resources, such as virtual server instances and Block Storage volumes. See the Access management tags section in Managing IAM access for VPC Infrastructure Services. For more information about using access management tags, see the following IAM resources:

• Controlling access to resources by using tags UI tutorial
• Working with tags
• Granting users access to tag resources and service IDs

8 November 2022

Backup policy jobs

You can now list all jobs for a backup policy and retrieve backup policy job details from the UI, CLI, or API. Backup policy job information includes the backup plan used to create the backup snapshot, the backup job type, job status, source volume, target snapshot, and additional information. For more information, see Viewing backup jobs.

31 October 2022

Terraform is now available for sharing images across an enterprise account

You can now share or publish custom images by using Terraform to other accounts within your enterprise by using a private catalog. If you select a catalog image that belongs to a different account, review Using cross-account image references in a private catalog in Terraform for additional considerations and limitations. To create a private catalog, see the tutorial Onboarding a virtual server image with Terraform. To create an instance from a catalog image using Terraform, see Creating virtual server instances by using Terraform.

21 October 2022

Context-based restrictions (limited availability)

For accounts authorized to preview this functionality, account owners and administrators are now able to define and enforce network access policies for IBM Cloud VPC resources. For more information and for specific VPC Infrastructure services that are supported for context-based restrictions, see Protecting Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Infrastructure Services with context-based restrictions (limited availability).

19 October 2022

Windows BYOL for multi-tenant hosts

You can now bring your own license for Windows operating systems with a custom image to provision virtual server instances on multi-tenant hosts. Previously Windows BYOL was limited to dedicated hosts. For more information, see Bring your Own License and Getting started with custom images.

23 September 2022

IBM Wazi as a Service

IBM Wazi as a Service (Wazi aaS) is now generally available in IBM Cloud in Tokyo (jp-tok), São Paulo (br-sao), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), and Washington DC (us-east) regions. For more information, see IBM Wazi as a Service product page.

• For the latest updates of z/OS dev and test stock images, see Change log for z/OS stock images.
• For instructions on creating z/OS virtual server instances, see Creating virtual server instances.

Network interfaces for virtual servers

You can now add up to 15 network interfaces to virtual server instances. The number of interfaces that a virtual server supports depends on the vCPU count that is in the instance profile. Profiles that include 17 - 48 vCPUs now support up to 10 network interfaces. Profiles that include 49 or more vCPUs now support up to 15 network interfaces. For existing virtual servers with 17 or more vCPUs to take advantage of the new network interface limits, a running virtual server instance must be stopped and restarted. For more information about multiple network interfaces, see Managing network interfaces.

22 September 2022

Sharing images across an enterprise account

You can now share or publish custom images to other accounts within your enterprise by using a private catalog. A private catalog provides a way for you to manage access to products for multiple accounts. You can use any existing x86 virtual server custom image with a private catalog, with the exception of an encrypted image. For more information, see Getting started with Catalog Images on VPC and the tutorial Onboarding a virtual server image for VPC. Custom images can't be deleted while being managed from a catalog and can only be managed from one catalog product offering version at a time. Deleting the catalog does not free its managed resources for a 7-day reclamation period. For more information, see Deleting a custom image in a private catalog and Using resource reclamations. If you plan to share images with other accounts, users in those accounts should be aware of considerations related to cross-account references to those images. For more information, see Using cross-account image references in a private catalog. Custom images can also be published to the IBM Cloud catalog and to other (non-enterprise) accounts. This process requires onboarding to the IBM Cloud Partner Center.

Deprecated VPN for VPC ciphers

The following VPN for VPC IKE and IPsec ciphers are now deprecated:

• Authentication algorithms md5 and sha1
• Encryption algorithm triple_des
• Diffie–Hellman groups 2 and 5

You have until 13 December 2022 to upgrade to more secure ciphers. After this date, VPN connections using deprecated ciphers show a status of down (and no longer transfer data) until you upgrade from the weak cipher.

Additional VPN for VPC ciphers

VPN gateways now provide new algorithms to help meet your security and compliance requirements.

• IKE policy now supports the sha384 value for authentication, aes192 for encryption, and 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 31 values for Diffie–Hellman groups.

• IPsec policy now supports sha384 and disabled values for authentication, aes192, aes128gcm16, aes192gcm16, and aes256gcm16 values for encryption, and group_15, group_16, group_17, group_18, group_20, group_21, group_22, group_23 , group_24, and group_31 Diffie–Hellman groups.

Specifying IKE and IPsec policies when configuring a VPN connection is optional. If a policy is not selected, one is chosen through auto-negotiation. For more information, see About policy negotiation.

20 September 2022

Updating subnets for existing application load balancers

You can now add or remove subnets for existing ALBs by using the UI, API, or CLI. ETag support was added for load balancer resources, as it is required for any resource that allows arrays to be updated. For more information, see to Updating subnets for existing application load balancers.

For more information about using ETags, see Concurrent update protection.

12 September 2022

New stock images for VPC

The following stock images are now available for x86-64 virtual server instances:

• The Windows Server 2019 Standard Edition with SQL Server 2019 Web Edition bundle is now supported as an image when you provision a IBM Cloud VPC server. If you select this stock image when you provision a virtual server instance, the software that is part of that bundle is also included in your instance.
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is now supported as an operating system stock image when you provision an x86-64 virtual server. For more information, see x86-64 virtual server images.

31 August 2022

Configuration governance

New VPC config rules for the Image service and Virtual Servers are now available with the Security and Compliance Center. For more information, see the Security and regulation compliance section of Understanding your responsibilities when using Virtual Private Cloud.

30 August 2022

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud

You can now create IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud VPC instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in the London (eu-gb) region, in addition to São Paulo (br-sao), Toronto (ca-tor), Tokyo (jp-tok), and Washington DC (us-east) regions. To create IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server for IBM Cloud VPC instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances, and IBM Hyper Protect Container Runtime image. A valid contract is required for creating an instance. For more information, see About the contract.

23 August 2022

Additional user tag support for boot and data volumes

You can now add user tags to boot and data volumes when provisioning a virtual server instance or creating an instance template. You can add tags to the boot volume by editing it during instance provisioning. You can also add user tags for any data volumes you create and attach. If you import from a snapshot, any tags defined for the snapshot will be applied to the new volume. For more information, see Create and attach a Block Storage volume when you create a new instance. For more information about user tags, see Working with tags.

17 August 2022

New stock image for bare metal servers

Debian 11 is now supported as an image when you provision a bare metal server.

15 August 2022

Health check metrics for application load balancer pools

Two new health check metrics have now been added to IBM Cloud Monitoring for application load balancers, specifically for pools:

• A metric for reporting the total number of members in a pool.
• A second metric for reporting the total number of healthy (or active) members in a pool.

: For more information about these new metrics or the IBM Cloud Monitoring service, refer to Monitoring Application Load Balancer for VPC metrics.

09 August 2022

VPC Instance Metadata service

A restriction was removed from the instance metadata service in which you had to stop and restart the virtual server instance to fully enable the metadata service. You can now create instances with the metadata service disabled and then enable the service for the instance to start using it immediately.

08 August 2022

Virtual servers for VPC

You can now use the UI, CLI, and API to specify user tags for volume resources when you create an instance. You can add user tags to the instance's boot volume by editing the boot volume. You can also add user tags when attaching a data volume to the instance. For more information, see Adding user tags to Block Storage volumes.

Snapshot and Backup for VPC

The quota of snapshots and backup snapshots you can create per volume has been increased to 750.

01 August 2022

Sharing images across an enterprise account (beta)

You can now share or publish custom images to other accounts within your enterprise by using a private catalog. A private catalog provides a way for you to manage access to products for multiple accounts. You can use any existing x86 virtual server custom image with a private catalog, with the exception of an encrypted image. For more information, see Getting started with Catalog Images on VPC.

30 June 2022

IBM Wazi as a Service (s390x processor architecture)

You can now create virtual server instances of IBM z/OS with IBM Wazi as a Service (Wazi aaS) image on IBM Z (s390x processor architecture) in IBM Cloud in the Tokyo (jp-tok), São Paulo (br-sao), Toronto (ca-tor), and London (eu-gb) regions. The option to select the Wazi aaS z/OS dev and test image is offered as an IBM Cloud allow-listed service. For more information, see IBM Wazi as a Service product page.

File Storage for VPC

You can now access a customer root key (CRK) from one account, and then use that key to encrypt file shares you create in another account. When you create the file share, you specify the CRN of a root key from the account that contains the key. For more information, see Creating file shares with customer-managed encryption.

24 June 2022

New stock image for bare metal servers

Ubuntu (20.04 and 18.04) is now supported as an image when you provision a bare metal server.

21 June 2022

Backup for VPC (GA)

You can now create automated backup snapshots of your Block Storage volumes. If your original volume is compromised, you can restore it from a backup snapshot. You create a backup policy to control which source volumes are selected for backup by matching user tags in the volume with tags that are defined in the policy. Each policy contains up to four backup plans, which define how often backup snapshots are taken (daily, weekly, monthly, or more frequently by using a cron-spec) and retained (by date or by count). You can also view backup jobs, which show status of backup snapshots that are being created or deleted. For more information about this service, see Backup for VPC.

10 June 2022

Block Storage for VPC

You can use the volumes API to restore an unattached data volume from a snapshot. Restoring from a snapshot creates a new, fully provisioned volume. The data volume that was created from the snapshot is fully hydrated (data is restored) when you later attach it to an instance. For more information, see Restoring a volume from a snapshot.

01 June 2022

File Storage for VPC

For accounts authorized to preview this service, you can increase or decrease file share IOPS to meet your performance needs. Adjust IOPS within an IOPS tier profile or a custom profile. Or, adjust IOPS between profiles, for example, from a 3 IOPS/GB tiered profile to a custom profile. Adjusting IOPS within a profile or between profiles depends on the file share size. For more information, see Adjusting file share IOPS.

27 May 2022

Secrets Manager for application load balancers

Application load balancers now support IBM Secrets Manager. With Secrets Manager, you can create, lease, and centrally manage secrets that are used in IBM Cloud® services or your custom-built applications.

As a reminder, end of support for IBM Cloud Certificate Manager was 31 December 2022. Remaining instances of Certificate Manager have been deleted. If you have any user-provided Ingress secrets stored in Certificate Manager, they are no longer valid.

17 May 2022

File Storage for VPC

For accounts authorized to preview this service, you can configure replication for new and existing file shares. Replication creates a read-only copy of your file share data in a different zone. You can fail over to the replica share if the source share becomes damaged or compromised. For more information, see About file share replication.

You can now add user tags from the UI, CLI, or API when you create a new file share or update file shares. For more information, see Adding user tags.

29 April 2022

Backup for VPC (select availability)

Accounts authorized to preview this service can create backup policies and plans to automatically back up Block Storage volumes. Backup policies control which source volumes are selected for backup by matching user tags in the volume with tags that are defined in the backup policy. Policies can contain up to four backup plans, which specify how often backup snapshots are taken (daily, weekly, monthly, or by using a cron-spec) and retained (by date or by count). You can also view backup jobs, which show status of backup snapshots that are being created or deleted. This release also provides new functionality for restoring volumes from backup snapshots. For more information about this service, see Backup for VPC concepts.

28 April 2022

UI Updates

The following UI updates were made:

• The custom image details information was moved from the side panel to a separate custom image details page.
• Previously, when you changed the region or zone while you provision a virtual server instance, you had to click either Save or Cancel to continue. This behavior was changed and you don't need to make that selection when you change the region or zone.
• You can now delete the virtual server instance without manually unbinding the floating IP address. When you delete the virtual server instance, the floating IP address is now automatically unbound before the virtual server instance is deleted. This UI change now matches how the virtual server instance is deleted when you use the CLI or API.

11 April 2022

2022-03-29 release of the VPC API introduced incompatible changes

The 2022-03-29 release of the VPC API necessitated incompatible changes in support of the reserved IPs feature:

• IP addresses are now modeled as objects (resources), rather than strings.
• Security groups must now be associated with targets rather than network interfaces.

Even if you are not planning to use reserved IPs, to avoid regressions in client functionality, be sure to reference 2022-03-29 API migration and follow the Action needed recommendations before you specify version 2022-03-29 or later. For more information, see the API change log and Reserved IP known issues.

7 April 2022

Backup for VPC (limited availability)

For accounts authorized to preview this service, you can create backup policies that automatically back up your Block Storage volumes. Backups are triggered when a user tag is applied to a volume matches a backup policy tag. Each backup policy has a backup plan, which defines how often backups are taken and how long they're retained. With this release, you can create and update up to four backup plans per policy. You can also track backup job status when a backup is created. For more information, see About Backup for VPC.

31 March 2022

Add "Other" device types as Application Load Balancer (ALB) pool members

You can now add "Other" device types as ALB back-end pool members, such as servers contained within a Power Systems Virtual Server instance connected over IBM Cloud Direct Link. In the past, you were only able to select virtual server instances or Bare Metal servers within a VPC. When you create a new member, select the Other tab from the Attach server screen and enter the device IP address. For more information, see Creating an IBM Cloud Application Load Balancer for VPC.

30 March 2022

New stock image for bare metal servers

RHEL 8.4 is now supported as an image when you provision a bare metal server.

29 March 2022

UDP support for Network Load Balancers (NLB)

You can now set User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the communication protocol for the Network Load Balancer for VPC (NLB) listener and pool. UDP is a communications protocol for establishing low-latency and loss-tolerating connections between applications on the internet. It speeds up transmissions by enabling the transfer of data before an agreement is provided by the receiving party. For more information, see Configuring the UDP protocol for network load balancers.

When you configure UDP and attaching a pool to your listener, you must configure the pool with the same protocol as the listener.

Reserved IPs

You can now assign an IP address to your virtual server instance by specifying an already reserved IP for private IPs and bind them to network interfaces. For more information, see Managing IP addresses.

24 February 2022

VPC Instance Metadata Service (GA)

The VPC Instance Metadata service is now generally available in all regions. This free service provides a REST API that you invoke within an instance to get information about that instance. Access to the API is unavailable from outside the instance. The service is disabled by default. Before you can access the metadata, you need to use the service to generate an instance identity access token for accessing the metadata service. You can optionally get an IAM token from this token to access all IAM-enabled services. For more information, see About VPC Instance Metadata.

Virtual server instances created on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) are not enabled for the VPC Instance Metadata service. The metadata service is supported only on x86 systems.

UI Update

A new Location cascading selector is available. For example, when you provision a virtual server, the Location section now has three new cascading selector boxes. You can now choose the geographic location, the metro (region) location, and the zone. The options available in these boxes are updated that are based on your selections. If you select “Americas” for the Geography, then the Metro box displays only the Metros available for the Americas.

22 February 2022

Host failure recovery policies

Host failure recovery policies for VPC are generally available (GA). For more information about host failure recovery policies, see Host failure recovery policies.

15 February 2022

LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture)

You can now create virtual server instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in IBM Cloud in the Tokyo (jp-tok), London (eu-gb), and São Paulo (br-sao) regions. For more information about available LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) profiles, see s390x instance profiles. To create instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances by using the UI.

Resizable boot volumes

You can now increase the capacity of a boot volume, up to 250 gigabytes (GB), when you create an instance from an image or instance template. You can also directly update an existing boot volume to increase its capacity. For more information, see Increasing boot volume capacity.

Backup for VPC (closed beta)

For accounts authorized to preview this service, you can create backup policies that automatically backup your Block Storage volumes. Backups are triggered when a user tag is applied to a volume matches a backup policy tag. Each backup policy has a backup plan, which defines how often backups are taken and how long they're retained. For more information, see About Backup for VPC (Beta).

File Storage for VPC

The file service is now integrated with the Security and Compliance Center to help you manage security and compliance for your organization. For more information about this feature, see Managing security and compliance.

14 February 2022

Snapshots for VPC

The snapshots service is now integrated with the Security and Compliance Center to help you manage security and compliance for your organization. For more information about this feature, see Managing security and compliance.

11 February 2022

Maximum bandwidth for each vNIC is increased

The maximum bandwidth for a vNIC is now 25 Gbps instead of the previous 16 Gbps to 25 Gbps. For more information, see Optimizing network bandwidth allocation for profiles.

10 February 2022

Block Storage attachments

Limits on the number of Block Storage data volumes you can attach to an instance are amended. Previously, instances that were created from smaller vCPU profiles attached only up to four data volumes. These limits are removed. For all instances, you can attach up to 12 Block Storage data volumes.

08 February 2022

Port ranges for public network load balancers

When creating a public network load balancer, you can now specify a range of listener ports.

Bare Metal server support for application load balancers

Bare Metal server members are now supported on application load balancers. For more information, see Load balancers for VPC overview.

31 January 2022

Bare Metal Servers for VPC

Bare Metal Servers for VPC is generally available (GA). For more information about bare metal servers, see About Bare Metal Servers for VPC.

25 January 2022

Security group support for Virtual Private Endpoint (VPE) gateways

You can now attach security groups to your endpoint gateways and manage them for your application needs. Attach security groups when you create an endpoint gateway, or modify security groups that are bound to an endpoint gateway after provisioning. For more information, see Configuring ACLs and security groups for use with endpoint gateways.

Update to Snapshots for VPC

When you view details of a snapshot from the UI, CLI, or API, a new field shows when the snapshot was captured from the volume. This feature applies to snapshots created after January 2022.

21 January 2022

New stock images for virtual servers

The following stock images are now available for virtual servers:

• Red Hat 8.4 for SAP
• SLES 12 SP5 for SAP
• SLES 15 SP3 for SAP

14 January 2022

Application Load Balancer (ALB) for VPC

Application load balancers now support HTTP/HTTPS compression, which you use to compress data that is transmitted to your users. For more information, see Compression (HTTP/HTTPS only).

High Availability (HA) Virtual Network Function (VNF) support

Support for a highly available, highly resilient virtual network functions can be achieved by using the "routing mode" feature of the IBM Cloud Network Load Balancer (NLB) for VPC. For more information, see About virtual network functions over VPC and About HA VNF deployments.

Updates to Getting started with IBM Cloud VPC button

The "Getting started with IBM Cloud VPC" button now includes access to tours that are specific to what you are doing on the IBM console. If a tour is not available, the button takes you to the VPC List view.

06 January 2022

UI update when you create a virtual server

When you create a virtual server, the UI is updated to include a link in the Operating system section that opens a panel that contains information about the image lifecycle.

16 December 2021

File Storage for VPC (select availability)

IBM Cloud® File Storage for VPC is now available for customers with special approval to preview this service in the Washington DC (us-east), Dallas (us-south), Frankfurt (eu-de), London (eu-gb), Sydney (au-syd), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions.

For more information about this service, see About File Storage for VPC.

09 December 2021

Security updates

The following stock images were refreshed with the most recent fixes and security updates.

• Debian version 10
• CentOS version 7
• RHEL versions 7, 8.2, and 8.4
• Ubuntu version 20.04

Windows stock image updates

For all Windows® stock images, TLS 1.2 was enabled and all earlier versions were disabled.

The following cloudbase-init configuration files were updated to add the value "ntp_use_dhcp_config=true":

• C:\Program Files\Cloudbase Solutions\Cloudbase-Init\conf\cloudbase-init.conf
• C:\Program Files\Cloudbase Solutions\Cloudbase-Init\conf\cloudbase-init-unattend.conf

New stock image for virtual servers

Rocky Linux version 8.5 is now supported as a stock image when you provision IBM Cloud VPC virtual servers.

30 November 2021

VPN client-to-site servers update (open beta)

You can now update a VPN server after the VPN is provisioned. For example, you can upgrade a stand-alone VPN server (one subnet) to a High Availability (HA) VPN server (two subnets in different zones). You can also detach a subnet to downgrade an HA VPN server to a stand-alone deployment, or change an attached subnet after your VPN server is provisioned. For more information, see Upgrading to an HA VPN server.

16 November 2021

New Very High Memory and Ultra High Memory instance profile family for dedicated host (select availability)

Very High Memory with instance storage and Ultra High Memory with instance storage profiles are now available for dedicated host.

Very High Memory profiles offer a core to RAM ratio of 1 vCPU to 14 GiB of RAM. This family is hosted exclusively on the latest generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum Cascade Lake server hosts and is best for OLAP workloads and SAP-related services, such as SAP NetWeaver. Very High Memory profiles are available in the Dallas (us-south), Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), London (eu-gb), Frankfurt (eu-de), Tokyo (jp-tok), Osaka (jp-osa), and Sydney (au-syd) regions. For more information, see Very High Memory with instance storage profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

Ultra High Memory profiles offer a core to RAM ratio of 1 vCPU to 28 GiB of RAM. This family is hosted exclusively on the latest generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum Cascade Lake server hosts and is optimized for running memory intensive applications and in-memory database such as SAP HANA, Memcached, or Redis. Ultra High Memory profiles are available in the Dallas (us-south) and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions. For more information, see Ultra HIgh Memory with instance storage profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

12 November 2021

Fedora Core OS

Fedora Core OS is now available in all regions as a stock image. The user login ‘root’ is disabled by default in Fedora Core OS. The user login ‘core’ can be used to log in to Fedora Core OS instances. For more information, see Virtual server images and User data examples for Fedora Core OS.

02 November 2021

Instance Metadata Service for VPC (select availability)

The metadata service is now available in all regions to customer accounts authorized to access this service. This service is enabled by default when you create new instances by using the UI, CLI, or API. You can also disable the service from these interfaces. For more information, see Enable or disable the metadata service.

The metadata service also provides a new API call to generate an IAM token from the instance identity access token by using trusted profile information. For more information, see Generate an IAM token from an instance identity access token.

Snapshots for VPC (GA)

You can now delete any or all snapshots not actively restoring a volume. Snapshots can be anywhere in the snapshot chain and must be in a stable state. For more information, see Deleting snapshots.

21 October 2021

UI Updates

When you create a virtual server instance by using the UI, the image selection on the UI was updated. The image selection is changed from a tile selection to a drop-down menu. For both custom and catalog images, a new side panel is available that you can use to filter, sort, and search for images.

15 October 2021

New GPU Instance Profile family

GPU profiles are available for all images. The profiles include attached NVIDIA 16 GB PCIe v100 GPUs. Drivers must be installed separately. You can use these instances to accelerate certain processing functions for workloads such as inferencing and machine learning. For more information about this service, see Managing GPUs.

05 October 2021

New regions for Very High Memory instance profile family (select availability)

Very High Memory profiles now are available in the London (eu-gb), Osaka (jp-osa), and Sydney (au-syd) regions. For more information, see Very High Memory profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

01 October 2021

File Storage for VPC (select availability)

IBM Cloud® File Storage for VPC is now available in the London (eu-gb) region. For more information about this service, see About File Storage for VPC.

23 September 2021

VNF routing mode for network load balancers

With IBM Cloud VPC, you can provision Virtual Network Function (VNF) devices to gain better and more affordable scalability than you would by purchasing physical network devices. IBM Cloud VPC network load balancers with routing mode that you use to send traffic to only VNF devices as back-end targets. In addition, their health checks ensure that workloads only travel through healthy VNF devices. For more information about this service, see Creating a network load balancer with routing mode for VPC.

14 September 2021

Terraform available for Placement Groups

You can now create and manage placement groups in your IBM Cloud VPC by using Terraform. See Managing placement groups.

07 September 2021

New Very High Memory instance profile family (select availability)

Very High Memory profiles are available in the Dallas (us-south), Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), Frankfurt (eu-de), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. Very High Memory profiles offer a core to RAM ratio of 1 vCPU to 14 GiB of RAM. This family is optimized for running high-compute-intensity in-memory workloads like SAP BW/4 HANA. For more information, see Very High Memory profiles. For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment.

Instance Bandwidth (select availability)

Instance bandwidth is now available in the Dallas (us-south), Washington DC (us-east), Toronto (ca-tor), Frankfurt (eu-de), Osaka (jp-osa), Brazil (Sao Paulo) regions. When you provision a virtual server instance, you can now allocate bandwidth between attached volumes and networking by using the API and CLI. You can adjust bandwidth after you provision a virtual server instance by using the UI, API, and CLI. The maximum bandwidth capacity is determined by the instance profile that you select during instance provisioning. For more information, see Bandwidth allocation for instance profiles.

01 September 2021

New GPU Instance Profile family (Beta)

GPU profiles are available in a limited, allow-listed beta for all images. The profiles include attached NVIDIA 16 GB PCIe v100 GPUs. Drivers must be installed separately. You can use these instances to accelerate certain processing functions for workloads such as inferencing and machine learning. For more information about this service, see Managing GPUs.

26 August 2021

RHEL on SAP image support update

When you provision a virtual server instance and select Red Hat® Enterprise Linux, be aware that locking a version must be done manually. When you log in to your operating system, a message is displayed with the command that you need to manually lock the operating system version. Performing a “yum update” without the version locking results in the operating system that is upgrading to the latest RHEL release, which is 8.4.

Block Storage for VPC

For Block Storage for VPC volumes that are attached to a virtual server instance, you can increase or decrease IOPS for a volume by specifying a different IOPS tier profile or different IOPS value withing a custom IOPS band. For more information, see Adjusting IOPS for Block Storage volumes.

Client-to-site VPN servers (Beta)

Until now, the IBM Cloud VPN for VPC service that is supported only site-to-site connectivity, which connects your on-premises network to the IBM Cloud VPC network. This beta adds client-to-site connectivity, which allows users to connect to their IBM Cloud VPC infrastructure through a secure or encrypted connection over the internet. This service is especially useful for individuals that are working at home, traveling, or at locations where site-to-site VPN might not be available. For more information, see About client-to-site VPN servers.

24 August 2021

HTTPS redirect listeners

The HTTPS redirect feature is now available on Application Load Balancer for VPC to redirect traffic from an HTTP load balancer listener to an HTTPS listener. You can configure an HTTPS redirect on either load balancer listeners, load balancer policies, or both.

Virtual server instances for VPC

When you provision an instance, you can now allocate I/O bandwidth between storage and network bandwidth from the total instance bandwidth. The maximum bandwidth capacity is determined by the instance profile that you selected during instance provisioning. For more information, see Bandwidth allocation for instance profiles.

19 August 2021

Larger size boot volumes for custom images

You can import custom images with a boot disk size from 10 - 250 GB, which becomes the image's minimum provisioned size after you import. When you specify the image as part of creating an instance, the boot volume capacity is set to this size. For more information, see Planning custom images.

18 August 2021

File Storage for VPC

Custom IOPS profiles are available with capacity up to 16,000 GB. For more information, see File Storage profiles.

You can also increase the file share size from its original capacity in GB increments up to 32,000 GB capacity, depending on your share profile. For more information, see Expanding file share capacity.

IBM Cloud® File Storage for VPC is available to customers with special approval to preview this service in the Washington DC (us-east), Dallas (us-south), and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions.

17 August 2021

Instance Identifier Update

The instance identifier (ID) now includes the SMBIOS system-uuid as a portion of the ID. The ID, including the SMBIOS system-uuid portion, is static and persists for the lifecycle of the virtual server instance until that virtual server instance is deleted. For more information, including how to retrieve this information from within your virtual server, see Retrieving the virtual server instance identifier section in Managing virtual server instances.

Placement groups (GA)

Placement groups for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud are used to create placement group strategies for managing high availability workloads. A placement group contains virtual server instances that share a common placement strategy. Placement strategies influence the physical placement of select VPC resources to meet certain workload demands. For more information about placement groups, see About placement groups.

11 August 2021

Auto scale supports data volumes and private catalog

Instance groups now support by using an instance template that includes one or more data volumes. In addition, instance groups are now supported in private catalog. For more information about instance groups, see Creating an instance group for auto scaling.

9 August 2021

LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture)

You can now create virtual server instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) in IBM Cloud in the Tokyo (jp-tok) region. For more information about available LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture) profiles, see s390x instance profiles. To create instances on LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Creating virtual server instances by using the UI. For more information about some of the limitations of LinuxONE (s390x processor architecture), see Service limitations.

26 July 2021

New São Paulo (br-sao) region

The São Paulo (br-sao) region endpoint is now in service at https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Creating a VPC in a different region.

22 July 2021

Block Storage for VPC

IOPS tier and custom profiles are available with volume capacity up to 16,000 GB. For more information, see Block Storage profiles.

For secondary volumes that are attached to a virtual server instance, you can increase capacity in GB increments up to 16,000 GB, depending on the volume's profile. The volume capacity is immediately increased. For more information, see Expanding Block Storage volume capacity.

21 July 2021

Bare Metal Servers for VPC (closed beta)

If your account is granted special approval to preview this feature, you can now create bare metal servers to host VMware clusters in VPC. You can set up VMware management applications and create VMware virtual machines (VM) on the bare metal servers. As bare metal servers are integrated with the VPC platform, you can take advantage of the network, storage, and security capabilities provided by the VPC. For more information, see About Bare Metal Servers for VPC (beta).

The bare metal console feature is temporarily unavailable. An "unauthorized" error is returned if you try to connect to the console.

13 July 2021

Instance Identifier Update

The instance identifier (ID) now includes the SMBIOS system-uuid as a portion of the ID. The ID, including the SMBIOS system-uuid portion, is static and persists for the lifecycle of the virtual server instance until that virtual server instance is deleted. For more information, including how to retrieve this information from within your virtual server, see Retrieving the virtual server instance identifier section in Managing virtual server instances.

6 July 2021

File Storage for VPC

The file storage general purpose 3 IOPS/GB profile is expanded so you can create file shares up to 32 TB with potential max IOPS performance of 96,000 IOPS. For more information, see File Storage profiles. File Storage for VPC is available to customers with special approval to preview this service in the Washington DC (us-east), Dallas (us-south), and Frankfurt (eu-de) regions.

30 June 2021

Placement groups (Beta)

Placement groups for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud are used to create placement group strategies for managing high availability workloads. A placement group contains virtual server instances that share a common placement strategy. Placement strategies influence the physical placement of select VPC resources to meet certain workload demands. For more information about placement groups, see About placement groups.

17 June 2021

UI enhancement

When you provision a VPC, you can now create multiple subnets from the default address prefix. When you create a VPC, one subnet is created in each zone of the VPC region. You can add up to a maximum of nine subnets.”

Application Load Balancer (ALB) support for cookie-based session persistence

ALBs now supports HTTP-cookie persistence and application-cookie persistence. For more information, see Advanced traffic management.

03 June 2021

UI enhancement

When you delete a virtual server, you must now confirm that you want to delete an instance by typing delete.

25 May 2021

Snapshots for VPC

Snapshots for VPC is a regional offering that lets you create a point-in-time copy of your Block Storage boot or data volume. Select a snapshot during instance provisioning and restore a new, fully-provisioned boot volume to start the instance. You can also create and attach a data volume from a snapshot within a running virtual server instance. Learn more about creating and using snapshots and explore the new snapshots API methods.

13 May 2021

Scheduled Scaling for VPC (GA)

Scheduled Scaling for VPC lets you set scheduled actions to automatically scale instance group capacity up or down based on daily, intermittent, or seasonal demand. You can set multiple, recurring scheduled action frequencies that can scale monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, or even every set number of minutes. For more information, see Scheduled scaling.

15 May 2021

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Gen 1 end of service

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Gen 1 reached end of service on 26 February 2021. The VPC on Classic API reference has been removed from the library page on 15 May, 2021. VPC on Classic users are being redirected to the Virtual Private Cloud API.

06 May 2021

New Ultra High Memory instance profile family (select availability)

Ultra High Memory profiles are hosted exclusively on the latest generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum Cascade Lake server hosts and are optimized for running memory intensive applications and in-memory database such as SAP HANA, Memcached, or Redis. This profile family offers our highest vCPU to memory ratio with 28 GiB of memory for every 1 vCPU of compute and up to 5.7 TiB of available RAM. For more information, see x86 Instance Profiles.

The Ultra High Memory family of profiles is currently available in the Dallas (us-south) and Frankfurt (eu-de) multizone regions (MZRs). For more information about the Multizone regions, see Region and data center locations for resource deployment. Contact your IBM Sales representative if you need Ultra High Memory profiles in an MZR other than Dallas or Frankfurt.

30 April 2021

File Storage for VPC

File Storage for VPC is available to customers with special approval to preview this service in the Washington DC (us-east), Dallas (us-south), and Washington DC (us-east) regions. With this feature, you can create NFS-based file shares in a single zone in a region. You can share file storage over multiple virtual service instances within the same zone across multiple VPCs. For more information about this service, see About File Storage for VPC. Contact your IBM Sales representative if you are interested in getting access.

07 April 2021

File Storage for VPC (beta)

NFS-based file shares for a zone within a region are available in a limited, allow-listed beta. You can share file storage over multiple virtual service instances within the same zone across multiple VPCs. For more information about this service, see About File Storage for VPC (beta).

UI enhancement

When provisioning a new VPN gateway in a default VPC, the UI now populates the subnet table with the default subnet information.

06 April 2021

New Toronto (ca-tor) region

The Toronto (ca-tor) region endpoint is now in service at https://ca-tor.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Creating a VPC in a different region.

01 April 2021

Instance storage

You can now provision a virtual server instance with instance storage, a set of one or more solid state drives directly attached to your instance. An instance storage disk provides fast, affordable, temporary storage to improve the performance of cloud-native workloads with scratch space, caching buffers, or a place for replicated data. To provision a virtual server instance with instance storage, you must select an instance storage profile. For more information, see About instance storage.

Dedicated hosts support instance storage

You can now provision a dedicated host with an instance storage profile, providing the capability to host virtual server instances that include instance storage. For more information, see Dedicated host profiles.

Instance resize (GA)

The ability to resize a virtual server instance by selecting a different profile to assign to the instance is now generally available. Profiles are a combination of instance attributes, such as the number of vCPUs, amount of RAM, network bandwidth, and more that define the size and capabilities of the virtual server instance. For more information, see Resizing an instance.

31 March 2021

Virtual server instance console

The virtual server instance console feature is now generally available in all regions. For more information, see Accessing virtual server instances by using VNC or serial consoles.

25 March 2021

New parameter-based rule types for application load balancers

When creating policy rules for IBM Cloud® Application Load Balancer for VPC (ALB), the field property may now be set to query or body to perform additional forms of layer 7 load balancing.

• query - Write layer 7 rules that use the query string to route traffic to a specific target.
• body - If the body of the POST request uses form encoding (UTF-8), then you can create layer 7 rules to route traffic based on the parameter name and value in the body. For more information, refer to Layer 7 load balancing.

TCP keep alive support for application load balancers

IBM Cloud® Application Load Balancer for VPC (ALB) now supports TCP keep alive. With this setting, the ALB sends TCP-keep-alive packets to both client and back-end servers every five seconds. For more information, refer to Advanced traffic management.

New monitoring metrics

IBM Cloud® Application Load Balancer for VPC (ALB) now has additional monitoring metrics to help track the traffic and usage patterns for your load balancers. These new metrics can provide insight about peak traffic hours, usage dropoffs, and overall usage patterns. The new metrics are:

• Total number of HTTP/HTTPS requests received by the back-end
• Average response time for HTTP/HTTPS requests
• Count of responses with the HTTP 2xx back-end response code
• Count of responses with the HTTP 3xx back-end response code
• Count of responses with the HTTP 4xx back-end response code
• Count of responses with the HTTP 5xx back-end response code

For more information, refer to Monitoring Application Load Balancer for VPC metrics.

Private network load balancers

IBM Cloud® Network Load Balancer for VPC (NLB) now supports the creation of private network load balancers. A private NLB is a load balancer only accessible from within the VPC network and/or where the client has reachability to the VPC network (for example, through Direct Link or a transit gateway). To create private load balancers, you must have a dedicated subnet with no custom routes configured for the subnet. For more information about creating a private NLB, refer to Creating a network load balancer for VPC.

19 March 2021

Virtual server instance console

The virtual server instance console feature is now generally available in the following regions: Dallas (us-south),Frankfurt (eu-de), London (eu-gb), Osaka (jp-osa), and Washington DC (us-east). For more information, see Accessing virtual server instances by using VNC or serial consoles.

Bring you own license (GA)

You can bring your own license (BYOL) when you import a RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Windows® custom image to IBM Cloud VPC. Because these images are registered and licensed by you, you maintain control over your licenses and with no additional cost. Acquisition and activation of the license is between you and and the OS vendor. For more information, see Bring your own license.

Dedicated hosts (GA)

Dedicated hosts are available in all regions. Use a dedicated host to carve out a single-tenant compute node for IBM Cloud VPC. For more information, see Creating dedicated hosts and groups

12 March 2021

New profiles

The Balanced, Compute, and Memory profile families now include three new profiles with 64, 96, and 128 vCPUs. Profiles with 64 or more vCPUs are deployed exclusively on 2nd generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8260 (Cascade Lake) running at a base speed of 2.4 GHz and an all-core turbo frequency of 3.1 GHz.

VPN for VPC

For high-security standards, VPN now supports SHA-512 authentication and Diffie-Hellman Group 19.

Gateway private IP addresses are now visible for gateway members.

05 March 2021

Instance resize (Beta)

Beta users can now resize a virtual server instance by selecting a different profile to assign to the instance. Profiles are a combination of instance attributes, such as the number of vCPUs, amount of RAM, network bandwidth, and more that define the size and capablilities of the virtual server instance. For more information, see Resizing an instance (Beta).

Snapshots for VPC (Beta)

Select beta users can now create snapshots of their boot and data volumes that are attached to a running virtual server instance. These snapshots can be used to create new volumes, which function like the original volume. For more information, see About Snapshots for VPC (Beta).

UI enhancement

When creating or editing a VPN policy (IKE or IPsec), a new authentication option is available, SHA512. Additionally, a new Diffie-Hellman key exchange group is supported: group 19.

25 February 2021

Dedicated hosts

You can now use dedicated hosts to carve out a single-tenant compute node for IBM Cloud VPC in the following regions: Dallas (us-south), Washington DC (us-east), London (eu-gb), Tokyo (jp-tok), and Osaka (jp-osa). For more information, see Creating dedicated hosts and groups.

Application load balancer security group integration

For enhanced security, application load balancers can now be associated with security groups. You can specify one or more security groups when you create the application load balancer, and associate security groups with your existing application load balancers. For more information, see Integrating an IBM Cloud Application Load Balancer for VPC with security groups.

UI enhancement

On the New virtual server for VPC page, selected SSH keys persist if you leave the page and then return to it during a single logged in session. If you log out or switch your account, the selected SSH keys change.

VPC address prefixes are no longer restricted to RFC-1918 addresses

You must now configure VPCs that use both non-RFC-1918 addresses and have public connectivity (floating IPs or public gateways) using a custom route that contains the new Delegate-VPC action. You must specify this action for destination CIDRs that are non-RFC-1918 compliant and also outside of the VPC, such as for destinations that are reachable through Direct Link, Transit Gateway, or VPC classic access. For more information about when to use the Delegate-VPC action, see Routing considerations for IANA-registered IP assignments.

18 February 2021

UI enhancement

You can now provision a VPN gateway or load balancer without first creating a VPC. If you don't have an existing VPC you can provision the VPN gateway or load balancer in the default VPC. The new VPN gateway or load balancer is created along with a default VPC that includes a default security group, access control list, and subnet.

07 February 2021

Virtual server instance console (Beta)

You can now access your virtual server by connecting to a VNC or serial console. This feature provides a quick-and-easy way for you to interact with the virtual server without using a Secure Shell. This is a beta feature that requires special approval. Contact your IBM Sales representative if you are interested in getting access. For more information, see Accessing virtual server instances by using VNC or serial consoles (Beta)

26 January 2021

New region

The Osaka (jp-osa) endpoint is now in service at https://jp-osa.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Creating a VPC in a different region. See also Endpoint URLs in the IBM Cloud VPC API.

11 January 2021

Customer-managed encryption (GA)

Customer-managed encryption, which supports deleting or disabling customer root keys and provides new statuses, is now available in the Washington DC (WDC) region. All VPC service regions now support this feature.

22 December 2020

Customer-managed encryption (GA)

For Block Storage volumes and encrypted custom images, deleting or disabling a customer root key (CRK) is now managed by these VPC services. When you delete a root key, the resources become unusable for normal operations. A new unusable status and reason code encryption_key_deleted or encryption_key_disabled has been added to the API for GET / volumes and GET / image methods. These statuses also appear in the CLI and UI. For more information, see Disabling root keys and Deleting root keys. For more information about key states and resource statuses, see User actions that impact root key states and resource status.

The Washington DC (us-east) multi-zone region will be enabled in January 2021. This feature is available in all other multi-zone regions.

18 December 2020

Bring you own license (Beta)

You can now bring your own license (BYOL) when you import a custom image to IBM Cloud VPC. This is a beta feature that is available for evaluation and testing purposes. Contact your IBM Sales representative if you are interested in getting access. For more information, see Bring your own license (Beta).

17 December 2020

Checksum (SHA256) for imported images (Beta)

Now when you import a custom image, you can view the checksum that's generated for the image when it is imported to IBM Cloud VPC. If you generate a checksum locally for your image before importing it, you can compare the two checksums to ensure that they are identical. For more information, see Validating a custom image after importing (Beta).

UI enhancements

Default boot volume names are now appended with a millisecond timestamp.

11 December 2020

VPN logging and auditing

The ability to monitor and audit your VPNs has been added to VPN for VPC. For more information, see Using IBM Log Analysis to view VPN logs.

01 December 2020

New SDK

The Node SDK is now generally available.

20 November 2020

Support for ingress routing

Ingress routing is included as part of custom routing tables, released on 30 October 2020. Ingress routing enables you to customize routes on incoming traffic to a VPC from traffic sources external to the VPC's availability zone (IBM Cloud Direct Link, IBM Cloud Transit Gateway, or another availability zone in the same VPC). For more information, see About routing tables and routes.

Support for datapath log forwarding with Log Analysis

Datapath log forwarding with IBM Log Analysis is now available for IBM Cloud Application Load Balancer for VPC. Data and health check logs are valuable for debugging, analysis, and maintenance purposes. With the datapath logging feature enabled, your load balancer forwards these logs to your account's IBM Log Analysis dashboard. For more information, see Datapath log forwarding with Log Analysis.

UI enhancements

You can now provision a VPC from within the New virtual server for VPC page.

12 November 2020

Route-based virtual private network (VPN) gateways for VPC

Use route-based VPN for VPC gateways to manage large, on-premises or cloud-based networks that require the ability to statically route network and connectivity over a secure, encrypted connection. VPN for VPC provides UI, CLI, and API support in all MZRs. For more information, see About VPN gateways.

UI enhancements:

You can now provision virtual server instances without first creating a VPC. Your virtual server instance is created in a default VPC.

The refresh data option is removed from all details pages. Instead, users can refresh by using the browser refresh.

06 November 2020

Proxy protocol support for IBM Cloud Application Load Balancer for VPC (ALB)

Proxy protocol provides a way to carry client information across proxies by appending it to the traffic your load balancer sends to the back-end servers. It also allows you to use listeners if incoming traffic contains proxy protocol information set by an intermediate proxy in between the client and your load balancer. See Enabling proxy protocol for details.

02 November 2020

Custom routing tables and routes (GA)

IBM Cloud Custom Routes for VPC enables you to configure and control the routing behavior of traffic within your VPC. This functionality provides the ability to explicitly manage traffic between and among subnets within a VPC; thereby, supporting network topologies that incorporate the use of virtual appliances, such as firewalls. This service also allows IBM Cloud to continue to develop and deliver advanced features and capabilities for our IBM Cloud services. For more information, see About routing tables and routes.

IP spoofing (GA)

IP spoofing allows users to enable or disable the IP spoofing check on virtual server instances. This facilitates the traffic flow configured with custom routes functionality. For more information, see About IP spoofing.

30 October 2020

Virtual private endpoint gateways (GA)

IBM Cloud Virtual Private Endpoints (VPE) for VPC is now generally available. This service enables you to connect to supported IBM Cloud services from your VPC network by using the IP addresses of your choosing, allocated from a subnet within your VPC. For more information, see About virtual private endpoint gateways.

1 October 2020

Encrypted images (GA)

Support for encrypting and importing a custom image is now generally available. For more information, see Creating an encrypted custom image.

UI enhancements

Improved name validation when an existing resource name is specified for a new resource

New way to view and select instance profiles in a side window when you provision an instance

Enhanced security group details page to include attached network interfaces, with a link to manage the interfaces

24 September 2020

New SDK

The Java SDK is now generally available.

04 September 2020

Network load balancer (GA)

The IBM Cloud Network load balancer (NLB) for VPC is now generally available. Use the network load balancer to distribute traffic among multiple server instances within the same region of your VPC. For more information, see About IBM Cloud Network Load Balancer for VPC.

01 September 2020

New region

The Sydney (au-syd) region endpoint is now in service at https://au-syd.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Creating a VPC in a different region. See also Endpoint URLs in the IBM Cloud VPC API.

27 August 2020

Large profiles (GA):

The following two 48-core profiles are now generally available:

• cx2-48x96
• mx2-48x384

For more information, see Profiles.

UI enhancements

New design for the VPC Overview page and generation switcher

Updated load balancer page to include auto scale enablement

24 August 2020

Auto scale (GA)

Auto scale is now generally available. Use auto scale to improve performance and costs by dynamically creating virtual server instances to meet the demands of your environment. For more information, see Creating an instance group for auto scaling.

12 August 2020

New image support

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 8 is now available in all regions.

07 August 2020

Virtual private endpoints (Beta)

Endpoint gateways for IBM Cloud VPC are now available in a limited, allow-listed beta. Use virtual private endpoints (VPE) to connect to supported IBM Cloud services from your VPC network by using the IP addresses of your choosing, which is allocated from a subnet within your VPC. For more information, see About Virtual Private Endpoints for VPC (Beta).

UI enhancements

Improved name validation on provisioning pages

Eliminated polling on data tables

Enhanced data tables

30 July 2020

Larger volume capacity for Block Storage for VPC (Beta)

Provision volumes with capacities greater than 2 TB and up to 16 TB, depending on the profile you selected. See Expanded Capacity IOPS Tiers (Beta).

Expanding Block Storage for VPC volume capacity

Expand the size of new Block Storage volumes that you create and attach to a virtual server instance on Gen 2 Compute resources. Indicate capacity in GB increments up to 16 TB, depending on your volume profile limits. For more information, see Expanding Block Storage volume capacity (Beta).

Encrypted images (Beta)

Import an encrypted custom image with beta support for the feature. For more information, see Creating an encrypted custom image (Beta).

New SDK

The Python SDK is now generally available.

23 July 2020

Customer-managed encryption for Block Storage for VPC (GA)

Customer-managed encryption is now available for protecting boot and data volumes on Gen 2 compute resources. Import your own root keys to the cloud or create a key using Key Protect or Hyper Protect Crypto Services. Then, use your key to secure your data. For more information, see Customer-managed encryption.

Flow logs for VPC (GA)

FLow logs for IBM Cloud VPC are now generally available. This service enables the collection, storage, and presentation of information about IP traffic flowing to and from network interfaces within a VPC. For more information, see About IBM Cloud Flow Logs for VPC.

16 July 2020

New region

The Tokyo (jp-tok) region endpoint is now in service at https://jp-tok.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Creating a VPC in a different region.

"Add to estimate" capability updates

Added support for itemized virtual server pricing in the Add to estimate capability.

03 July 2020

Network load balancer (Beta)

Network load balancers are available in a limited beta. Use network load balancers to distribute traffic among multiple server instances within the same region of your VPC. For more information, see Load balancers overview and About network load balancers.

VPN for VPC update

Access VPN monitoring metrics by using Monitoring VPN for VPC metrics.

26 June 2020

Dedicated hosts (Beta)

In a limited beta, use dedicated hosts to carve out a single-tenant compute node. For more information, see Creating dedicated hosts and groups (Beta).

19 June 2020

Updated custom images information

A new Planning for custom images checklist is available. The procedure for migrating a virtual server instance from classic infrastructure to IBM Cloud VPC is enhanced. For more information, see Migrating a virtual server from the classic infrastructure.

UI Enhancements

Added pagination for the security groups list table

On the VPN Provision page, select a subnet from a table or create subnets

New "upgrade pending" button if a user account is pending upgrade

New SDK

The Go SDK is now generally available.

02 June 2020

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC on POWER service is deprecated

As of 02 June 2020, you cannot provision new instances. Any instance that is still provisioned as of 22 August 2020 will be deleted. For more information, see the End of Service Announcement for Virtual Servers for VPC on POWER.

21 May 2020

Auto scale for VPC (Beta)

In this limited beta, use auto scale to improve performance and costs by dynamically creating virtual server instances to meet the demands of your environment. For more information, see Creating an instance group for auto scaling (Beta).

15 May 2020

Load balancer for VPC update

Back-end encryption (HTTPS for back-end pool) is now supported. See Using load balancers for VPC for details.

1 May 2020

Customer-managed encryption (Beta)

Customer-managed encryption (BYOK) is available in beta. Bring your own encryption keys and store the keys in Key Protect or Hyper Protect Crypto Services within VPC. Use BYOK to encrypt your VPC-enabled Block Storage at the volume level by using your own keys. For more information, see Creating virtual server instances with customer-managed encryption (Beta).

Flow logs (Beta)

Flow logs are now available in beta. Use flow logs to collect, store, and present the Internet Protocol (IP) traffic flowing to and from networks within your VPC. For more information, see About flow logs (Beta).

UI enhancement

Create a new subnet directly from the page where you create a new instance.

22 April 2020

New Frankfurt (eu-de) region

The Frankfurt (eu-de) region endpoint (eu-de) is now in service at http://eu-de.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Endpoint URLs in the IBM Cloud VPC API. See also Creating a VPC in a different region.

17 April 2020

Documentation correction

IBM Cloud interprets volume capacity units in gibibytes, but the API documentation used gigabytes. This issue is now resolved in the documentation.

03 April 2020

Load balancer for VPC update

Access load balancer monitoring metrics (throughput, active connections, connection rate) using IBM Cloud Monitoring.

The following cipher suites are supported for load balancer HTTPS listeners:

• TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
• TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256

27 March 2020

IBM Cloud Monitoring monitoring

Monitor virtual server instances using IBM Cloud Monitoring. Use the new Add monitoring button on the instance's Monitoring page to provision an instance of the monitoring service. If a monitoring instance is already provisioned for the region, use the Launch monitoring button to view metrics associated with the instance. For more information, see Monitoring metrics.

Updated styling

VPC pages in IBM console now use Carbon 10, the IBM open source design system, which improves consistency and quality.

09 March 2020

IBM virtual servers for VPC on POWER

POWER-based instances are now generally available. For more information, see the following resource:

• Profiles

02 March 2020

New London (eu-gb) region

The London (eu-gb) region endpoint (eu-gb) is now in service at http://eu-gb.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Endpoint URLs in the IBM Cloud VPC API. See also Creating a VPC in a different region.

UI enhancement

A new public gateway details page is available. For more information about public gateways, see external connectivity.

14 February 2020

New VPC network services (GA)

The following VPC network services are now generally available:

• Virtual private network (VPN): Use VPN to set up an IPsec site-to-site tunnel between your VPC and your on-premises private network or another VPC. For details, see Using VPN.
• Load balancers: Create public and private load balancers to distribute traffic among multiple server instances within the same region of your VPC. For details, see Using load balancers.

13 February 2020

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Windows stock images are now available

Provision an instance that uses an RHEL image or a Windows® image in the Dallas (us-south) region. For more information, see Images.

10 February 2020

API change notification

We have temporarily suspended API support for creating new instances from an existing boot volume. For more information, see tAPI change log.

03 February 2020

IBM virtual servers for VPC on POWER (Beta)

The beta is now open to anyone interested, no signup necessary. For more information, see the following resources:

• Profiles

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Windows stock images are now available

Provision an instance that uses an RHEL image or a Windows® image in the Washington DC (us-east) region. For more information, see Images.

UI enhancements

The modals for provisioning and attaching a public gateway and for creating an SSH key are now replaced with a redesigned side pane.

10 January 2020

New Washington DC (us-east) region

The Washington DC (us-east) region endpoint (us-east) is now in service at http://us-east.iaas.cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Endpoint URLs in the IBM Cloud VPC API. See also Creating a VPC in a different region.

CLI plug-in release 0.5.10

For more information, see VPC CLI reference.

• You now have an Example section in command help for creating and updating commands. Example: ibmcloud is help instance-create, ibmcloud is help instance-update, or ibmcloud is help volume-create.
• Use the resource group filter in list commands. Example: ibmcloud is vpcs --resource-group-name Littleton.
• JSON output format support for the ibmcloud is target --json command.
• ipv4 and primary-network-interface options for instance-create. Options help specify the primary private IP for the primary network interface when you create an instance.

09 December 2019

IBM virtual servers for VPC on POWER (Beta)

Create POWER-based instances for all virtual server families, including the addition of the GPU family (for POWER only). For more information, see Profiles.

UI enhancement

On the VPC details page, a new section is available to view source IP addresses for any cloud service endpoints you enabled. For more information, see Service endpoints.

CLI plug-in release 0.5.9

Target a specific resource group by using the '[-g YOUR_GROUP]' command option. If you specify the target resource group by using the ibmcloud target [-g YOUR_GROUP]command, the output displays only VPC resources inside of the specified resource group. This update also introduces enhancements to some of the commands for get and list, showing more detail for your VPC, instances, and instance profiles. For more information, see VPC CLI reference.

02 December 2019

Access control lists

Use an access control list (ACL) to control all incoming and outgoing traffic in IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud. For more information, see Setting up network ACLs.

14 November 2019

VPC layout

View resources that are associated with a VPC in the IBM Cloud console. For more information, see Viewing resources associated with a VPC.

07 November 2019

Load balancer (Beta)

Use the IBM Cloud® Load balancer for VPC service to distribute traffic among multiple server instances within the same region of your VPC. For more information, see Using load balancers (Beta).

VPN (Beta)

Use the IBM Cloud® VPN for VPC service to securely connect your VPC to another private network. For more information, see Using VPN (Beta).

31 October 2019

Classic access

Set up access from a VPC to your IBM Cloud® Classic infrastructure, including Direct Link connectivity. For more information, see Setting up access to classic infrastructure.

Advanced routing

Control the flow of network traffic in your VPC by configuring VPC routes. For more information, see About routing tables and routes.

04 June 2019

Introducing IBM Cloud VPC

IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud is now generally available in the Dallas (us-south), Frankfurt (eu-de), and Tokyo (jp-tok) regions. For more information, see IBM Cloud VPC.