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Bare metal server images

Bare metal server images

When you provision a bare metal server on your VPC, you need to select an image to determine the operating system for the server.

Supported images

The following operating systems are available as images when you create a bare metal server.

Table 1. Bare metal server images
Image Architecture
CentOS 7.x x86-64
CentOS Stream 9.x x86-64
Custom image x86-64
Debian 11 x86-64
Microsoft Windows 2016 Full standard, 2019 Full standard, 2022 Full standard x86-64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.x, 8.x x86-64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP 9.x, 8.8, 8.6, 8.4 x86-64
SUSE Red Hat Enterprise Linux 15, 12 x86-64
SUSE Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP 15, 12

For more information about SAP and bare metal servers, see SAP fast path for IBM Cloud Intel bare metal servers.

 x86-64
Ubuntu 22, 20.04 x86-64
VMware ESXi x86-64

Special considerations for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4

By default, the release lock feature for RHEL 8.4 is disabled. To prevent the RHEL from going beyond version 8.4 when you run an update, run the following commands from the command line:

# subscription-manager release --set=8.4

# yum clean all

Special considerations for VMware ESXi images

  • If you want to use TPM with a ESXi image, make sure that secure boot mode is enabled.

  • ESXi on Bare Metal Servers for VPC is charged monthly and is calculated per CPU based on the selected profile. If you choose to rent VMware ESXi with your server, you are subject to a prorated monthly cost for the license instead of an hourly rate. Proration amount is variable based on your billing anniversary date.

For more information about how to license ESXi, see Licensing ESXi hosts.

Special considerations for Ubuntu images

Ubuntu images don't include the VMD device driver in the standard kernel package that is needed to view attached NVMe drives on the system. To obtain this driver, install the linux-modules-extra-ibm package and then run modprobe vmd.

# export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
# apt update
# apt install -y -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confdef" -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confold" linux-modules-extra-ibm linux-modules-extra-$(uname -r)
# modprobe vmd

Custom images

You can import an image from IBM Cloud Object Storage that you can use to create a bare metal server.

Custom image considerations

Custom images for a bare metal server must meet the following requirements:

  • Support UEFI boot mode
  • A Pensando driver for networking
  • Support x86 architecture

Custom images have the following limitations

Custom images for a bare metal server don't support encrypted images.

For more information about custom images, see Getting started with custom images.

Special considerations for bare metal network performance upgrade

For improved packet rates on bare metal servers, update stock and custom Linux images to the latest available Pensando DSC drivers. For more information, see the AMD Pensando Support.

Linux distributions

To install the latest driver on a Linux distribution:

  1. Download the Pensando Linux driver package at AMD Pensando Support.

  2. Extract the image.

    tar -xvf PNSO-23.06.2-001-linux-08022023-1222.tgz

  3. Change the directory to the image you extracted.

    cd PNSO-1.64.0-E-58-linux-08022023-1222

    If you are running RHEL or SUSE, run the install.sh script to install the pre-built drivers.

  4. Run the installation.

    ./install.sh

    If you are running something other than RHEL or SUSE, you need to build the drivers. Make sure you have the 'git', 'make' and 'gcc' packages installed. Inspect any error messages that are returned from the 'make' command, some distributions require more packages. The error messages help to determine if more packages are required.

    cd drivers
tar xvf drivers-linux-eth.tar.xz
cd drivers-linux-eth
./build.sh

  5. When the drivers are built, you can install the kernel modules. The modules are used the next time that the server is started.

    make installation -C drivers/

  6. Activate the new module.

    Activate the module by using the console to avoid issues that are caused by a lost network connection.

    rmmod ionic && modprobe ionic

    The module is installed into /usr/lib/modules/${uname -r}/updates/eth/ionic/ionic.ko. If you upgrade your kernel, you need to repeat these steps.

Next steps