Quick start guides

This topic contains collections of quick start guides that have step-by-step instructions for how to set up your IBM Flex Systems Enterprise Chassis, related components, and management devices and interfaces. These quick start guides also include information about how to manage your IBM Flex System environment and how to use your hardware to achieve your business goals. This topic provides paths through the quick start guides to help you achieve a subset of common goals, but there are quick start guides in these collections that are not called out specifically in this topic. Be sure to browse the collections to find information on additional tasks you can perform using your IBM Flex System hardware.

Quick start guides for IBM Flex System build to order configurations

If you did not purchase an IBM PureFlex configuration, the first thing you have to do is install and configure your hardware, as follows:
Table 1. Quick start guides for installing and configuring your IBM Flex System hardware and management interfaces
Follow these quick start guides
  1. Install the IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis.
  2. Configure all components in the IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis.
  3. Optionally, if you have a Flex System Manager management node:
    1. Configure the IBM Flex System Manager management node.
    2. Select the chassis to be managed in the IBM Flex System Manager domain.
    3. Ensure that all managed hardware elements in your IBM Flex System Manager management domain are visible (being managed), including chassis, nodes, and modules.
  4. Complete the initial setup of the switch modules in the chassis.
Once your hardware is set up and configured, you are ready to start using it. The following table contains some of the goals that you may want to achieve using your IBM Flex System hardware and links to the quick start guides that you can follow to help you achieve those goals.
Table 2. Goals and corresponding quick start guides
If you want to... Follow these steps and quick start guides
Install an operating system on an X-Architecture compute node

Install the operating system on the compute node.
Set up your virtualization environment
Follow one of these checklists, depending on your environment

Use the quick start guides below to set up your virtualization environment:

  1. Install agents that are needed for VMControl (RHEL KVM and VMware ESXi).
  2. Discover storage resources.
  3. Configure network resources to support deployment and virtual server relocation. Perform the setup steps in this guide, then choose one of these: Creating a virtual Ethernet adapter on a VIOS virtual server.
  4. Create an image repository.
Install a guest operating system into a virtual server on an X-Architecture compute node (using local storage)
  1. Optionally, you may want to do the following:
  2. Install a hypervisor on the compute node.
  3. Install agents that are needed for VMControl (RHEL KVM and VMware ESXi).
  4. Create a virtual server.
  5. Install the operating system on the virtual server.
Keep your IBM Flex System environment running smoothly
Monitor the status of your environment and automate responses to problems
Relocate virtual servers automatically when a host is undergoing maintenance, in response to a hardware failure, or to maximize the use of resources
  1. Set up your virtualization environment.
  2. Create and populate a server system pool.
  3. Deploy a workload.
  4. Set up a server system pool that supports relocation.