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Create an instance

Note: There are often multiple ways to perform a task. The lab instructions may describe a particular way to go about things, but if you have prior experience with the IBM Cloud Web user interface and can perform the same task through different methods, feel free to do so. The lab instructions themselves may provide alternative ways to accomplish the tasks in different sections of the labs.

These instructions assume you are logged in to the IBM Cloud Web UI. If not, please log in before proceeding.

  1. Go to your VPC

    One way to do this is to start by clicking the "hamburger" menu in the top left (the icon will then turn into an "x" as shown in the screen snippet below), then click VPC Infrastucture and then VPCs:

    Then, select the link for your VPC from the list that is shown:

  2. Click the link to create a virtual server instance

    You may have to scroll down on the page- find and click on the "Create a virtual server instance" link:

  3. In the Location section, ensure that you select the Zone that contains your subnet. Give your instance a name in the Name field in the Details section. We chose lab-was-hpvs-lab1 in the screen shot below:

  4. Scroll down and click the Change image link to select it:

  5. On the Select an image screen, perform the following actions:

    1. Click the IBM Z, Linux ONE box.
    2. Toggle the slider on for "Run your workload with an OS and a profile for Secure Execution".
    3. Select the most recent image, ibm-hyper-protect-container-runtime-1-0-s390x-13.
    4. Click the blue Save button.

  6. These labs are going to demonstrate data persistence across virtual server instances, and for this you will need a data volume. You will create the data volume in this lab and then reuse it in subsequent labs. In the Storage section, click the Create button in the Data volumes section:

    In the Create data volume panel that slides in from the right, give your new data volume a name, give it the smallest possible size (10 GB) and then click the blue Create button:

    You should then see the volume you just created listed in the Data volumes subsection of the Storage section:

  7. Scroll down and in the Advanced options section, within the Instance configuration subsection, click the arrow at the right of the User data item. Drag the lower right corner of the User data box that appears in order to enlarge it a bit, like we've done in the screen shot below:

  8. At the end of the previous section of the lab, Prepare the contract, in the very last instruction, you displayed the contents of your user_data.yaml, on your prep system. Go back to your prep system and copy the file contents that you displayed to your clipboard. Then paste them into the user data box. It should look similar to what is shown below- we've redacted our IBM Log Analysis ingestion key from the screen shot, but you'll want your actual ingestion key to be in there. Also, for the purposes of the screen shot, we enlarged our User data box to be large enough to show more of the contract. Don't worry if your entire contract can't be displayed in the User data box since you can scroll in this area to see the entirety of what you pasted. See the screenshot below:

  9. Go to your IBM Log Analysis Dashboard so you can verify that you receive log messages from the instance that you're about to create.

    Open another tab in your browser and go to cloud.ibm.com. Log in if necessary. Assuming you're logged in, the below screenshot provides guidance on one way to get to your list of IBM Log Analysis instances:

    From the list, click the Open dashboard link:

  10. Now, go back to the tab where you were setting up your virtual server instance- click the blue Create virtual server button in the lower right. Reminder: you may incur costs for this action, and these costs are your responsibility. We will provide instructions to delete resources that are no longer needed to help you minimize any costs you might incur.

  11. Verify that your instance came up successfully.

    Within a couple of minutes of starting your instance, you should see many messages appear in your IBM Log Analysis Dashboard. After startup completes, you should see some simple messages every thirty seconds greeting Lab 1 Student and telling them what time it is. Our workload is rather simple isn't it, but it is useful for demonstrating disk persistence.

    If something went wrong in your setup of the contract that the hyper protect container runtime detects, your instance will automatically be stopped in five minutes. So if you receive no messages within five minutes of starting your instance, it is time to contact your instructor.

  12. Delete your instance.

    Your instance either started successfully- as evidenced by greetings to Lab 1 Student, or it failed to start successfully. In either case you will want to delete your instance at this point. Future labs will use the data volume that you created, but your current instance is no longer needed- in fact, leaving it around hinders subsequent labs- you won't be able to reuse your disk volume if it is still attached to this instance.

    The screenshot below shows how you can delete this instance if you are currently displaying it- by clicking the blue Actions button in the upper right, then choosing Delete. From there, follow the instructions to confirm your intention to delete the instance.

  13. Proceed to lab 2 if your instance was successful or seek help from the instructors if your instance creation was not successful.

Last update: November 20, 2023
Created: June 2, 2023