vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
The new volumes are added to the [list of Block Storage for VPC volumes](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-viewing-block-storage&interface=uiviewvols-ui).



1. Go to the list of Block Storage for VPC snapshots. In the [IBM Cloud console](https://cloud.ibm.com/login), go to the menu ![menu icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/f02b9c9adcbb7328d95a45e105cec371d50f15eb/icons/icon_hamburger.svg) > VPC Infrastructure > Storage > Block Storage for VPC snapshots.
2. Select a backup snapshot from the list. The Created by column shows which snapshots were created by a backup policy. Snapshots must be in a stable state for restoration.
3. From the overflow menu, select Create volume.
4. In the side panel, choose whether you want to attach a data volume to an existing instance, a boot volume to a new instance, or leave either volume unattached.



* To create a stand-alone (unattached) volume, leave Attach new volume to virtual server clear and specify the volume details that are shown in Table 1.
* To attach a data volume to an existing instance, select Attach volume to virtual server and provide zone and virtual server instance.
* To restore a boot volume, select Attach volume to virtual server and click Configure virtual server, which takes you to the [virtual server provisioning page](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-creating-virtual-servers&interface=uicreating-virtual-servers-ui).



The new volume is preselected and is shown in the Boot volume or Data volume section of the instance provisioning page. Placement depends on whether the volume that you created was from a bootable snapshot or data snapshot.

Table 1 describes the options on the side panel.



Table 1. Create Block Storage for VPC volume options.
Beta VPC Instance Metadata API change log 

Read the API change log to learn about updates and improvements to the IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) [Beta Instance Metadata API](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc-metadata-beta). The change log lists changes that are ordered by the date they were released.

Some beta features are for accounts that have been granted special approval to preview a particular beta feature. Contact your IBM sales representative if you are interested in getting access.

There are no backward-compatibility guarantees as a feature progresses through its beta phase or from the final beta release to its initial GA release. Using non-GA-mature features could introduce the risk of corrupting resources in your account. IBM strongly recommends that you do not use non-GA-mature features on production accounts.

To review the change log of generally available metadata API features, see the [VPC Instance Metadata API change log](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-metadata-api-change-log).



 11 July 2023 



 For all version dates 

Instance identity certificates. You can now use the instance identity access token and a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to [create](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc-metadata-betacreate-certificate) an instance identity certificate. For more information, see [Generating an instance identity certificate by using an instance identity access token](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-imd-configure-service&interface=apiimd-acquire-certificate). Instance identity certificates can be used when the traffic between an authorized client and the mounted file share is [encrypted in transit](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-file-storage-vpc-eit). For more information, see [Data encryption in transit for file shares](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-api-change-log-beta11-july-2023-beta).







 16 August 2022 



 For all version dates
You then [create a backup policy](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-backup-policy-create) and specify these tags, which identify the volumes that you're backing up. Within a policy, you create a [backup plan](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-backup-policy-create&interface=uibackup-plan-ui) to schedule backups of these resources. You can schedule backups to be taken every daily, weekly, or monthly.





 How many backups can I create? 

You can create up to 750 backups per volume per account. Consider how your [billing changes](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-about&interface=apisnapshots_vpc_considerations) when you increase the number of snapshots that you take and retain.





 What are backup policy jobs? 

Backup policy jobs, or backup jobs for short, are triggered when a scheduled backup snapshot is being created or deleted. If the create or delete action is successful, the backup 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](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-backup-view-policy-jobs).





 Can I back up my volume snapshots? 

Tags for snapshots are inherited from the source volume. When you restore a volume from a snapshot, and the tags that are applied to the new volume match the tags in a backup policy, the new volume is backed up. But you can't directly back up a snapshot that has tags in a backup policy.





 How long are backups retained? 

You can specify that backups be kept 1 - 30 days (default). The retention period can't be shorter than the backup frequency or it returns an error.

You can also specify the number of backups to retain, up to 750 per volume, after which the oldest backups are deleted.
Backup <br><br> * [Backup reference architecture for 3-tier web application in VPC](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/ha-infrastructure?topic=ha-infrastructure-regional-snapshots-3-tier-arch)<br> * [How-to guide for setting up snapshots for a 3-tier application in VPC](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/ha-infrastructure?topic=ha-infrastructure-create-three-tier-architecture)<br><br><br> 
 Automating High Availability Solutions <br><br> * [Creating a resilient three-tier highly available infrastructure VPC with Terraform](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/ha-infrastructure?topic=ha-infrastructure-create-three-tier-resilient-vpc)<br> * [Creating a resilient three-tier highly available infrastructure VPC with Auto Scale by using Terraform](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/ha-infrastructure?topic=ha-infrastructure-create-three-tier-resilient-vpc-autoscale)<br><br><br>
"lifecycle_state": "pending",
}





 Creating a cross-regional copy of a snapshot with the API 

New

When you create a snapshot, you can also copy the snapshot to another region. By creating a snapshot copy in another region and create new instances with the help of that snapshot, you can expand your VPC to a different region. This feature can be used in disaster recovery scenarios, as well. For more information, see [Cross-regional snapshot copies](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-about&interface=apisnapshots_vpc_crossregion_copy).

Make a POST /snapshots request to create a snapshot copy in the target region, specify the name and CRN of the source snapshot. In the following example, the target region is us-east and source region is us-south. The name and source_snapshot subproperties are required. The resource_group is optional. The encryption_key subproperty is required when the source snapshot is encrypted with a customer-managed key.

If the source snapshot is not encrypted with a customer key, the encryption of the copy remains provider-managed. If the source snapshot is protected by a customer-managed key, you must specify the customer-managed key that you want to use to encrypt the new copy.

curl -X POST "$vpc_api_endpoint/v1/snapshots?version=2023-05-10&generation=2" -H "Authorization: $iam_token" -d '{
"name": "my-snapshot", // required
"source_snapshot": { // required
"crn": "crn:[...]"
},
"resource_group": { // optional
"id": "2d1bb5a8-40a8-447a-acf7-0eadc8aeb054"
},
For more information about these key management services, see [Supported key management services for customer-managed encryption](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-vpc-encryption-aboutkms-for-byok).





 Can I convert my volume from provider-managed encryption to customer-managed encryption? 

No, after you provision a volume and specify the encryption type, you can't change it.







 Is there a way to copy the block storage volume to a different zone? 

No. You can't copy the storage volume to a different zone. However, you can create a copy of a snaphot of a volume in a different zone, and restore a volume from that snapshot.
* Create and modify IBM Cloud VPC services, virtual server instances, networks, network prefixes, storage volumes, ssh keys, and security groups of this VPC.
* Create and modify Power® Systems Virtual Server services, virtual server instances, networks, storage volumes, ssh keys of this Power® Systems Virtual Server.
* Create and modify IBM Cloud direct links and IBM transit gateways.
* Access existing {site{.data.keyword.cos_short}} services.



2. Make sure that you have an SSH key that you can use for authentication. This key is used to log in to all virtual server instances that you create. For more information about creating SSH keys, see [SSH keys](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-ssh-keys).
3. Upload SAP software installation packages and SAP maintenance planer XML files to an existing {site{.data.keyword.cos_short}} bucket. To configure access to these software packages from a running virtual server instance, you need following information:



* {site{.data.keyword.cos_short}} endpoint
* Object Storage bucket name
* Object Storage HMAC access key
* Object Storage HMAC secret access key



For more information about configuring API access in IBM Cloud Object Storage [Getting started with IBM Cloud Object Storage](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-object-storage?topic=cloud-object-storage-getting-started-cloud-object-storage) and [Service credentials](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-object-storage?topic=cloud-object-storage-service-credentia).
4. Choose a Linux operating system for your deployments. We recommend that you use the same OS release for all the hosts in the environment. When you use the same operating system version and release, it simplifies the operations management of the whole landscape. In this tutorial, Linux is used on all management components that run in your landscape. SAP solutions can run on Linux or on AIX.
5.
Business continuity 

IBM Cloud® for VMware® Regulated Workloads provides business continuity only at the management and edge layers.



 Management cluster 

The management cluster relies upon native vSphere® DRS capabilities to keep management services available to the platform administrators. Even with the configuration of the vSphere DRS features, manual intervention is sometimes necessary to restore access to management services. The use of shared storage minimizes the necessity of manual restoration activities if a VMware ESXi™ host is lost.



Table 1. Backup options

 System Backup option Frequency 

 Active Directory / DNS Image through the Veeam® agent Daily 
 vCenter Backup server file Daily 
 NSX-T™ Controllers Backup server file Daily 
 VMware Aria® Operations™ Manager VMDK through Veeam Daily 
 VMware Aria Operations™ for Logs VMDK through Veeam Daily 
 Virtual Machine Backup Server VMDK through Veeam 
 Juniper vSRX Backup server file through SCP from vSRX Commit change 





 Veeam backup server 

Veeam on IBM Cloud delivers reliable backup for virtual machines (VMs) within the IBM Cloud for VMware Regulated Workloads environment.

Veeam provides continuous backup of the management stack for protection against disasters. If corruption of any management stack component occurs, Veeam also provides rapid restoration to known good states. Veeam can also provide backup services for the workload cluster. The single site deployment must use the Veeam bare metal option to provide an acceptable backup repository.

The Veeam environment is provisioned initially with a single VM. The SaaS provider can extend this instance to their custom requirements, including remote database, more proxy servers, and scaling out of the backup repository.

Veeam is deployed to the management regions in both availability zones (AZ) for use in an MZR.







 Gateway cluster 

The gateway cluster does not use any vSphere resiliency features and backup of the gateway VMs is not performed. The gateway appliances deliver resilience at the application layer through formation of a high-availability cluster at the time of deployment. When you are using the vSRX, it is recommended that the rescue configuration is set anytime a change is made to the running configuration.
Planning backups 

When you plan a strategy for backing up your Block Storage for VPC volumes, you might find this checklist helpful to configure and use the backup service.



 Planning backups 

Consider the following prerequisites before you set up the VPC Backup Service.



Table 1. Checklist for planning backup policies

 Item Considerations 

 Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) Evaluate your [IAM access permissions](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-backup-service-managebaas-vpc-iam) to create and manage backups. 
 Volumes Evaluate which volumes are most important to back up. You can create backups of boot and data volumes. A volume with numerous changes and a lengthy retention period requires more attention than a volume with moderate changes. Also, the cumulative size of all backups for a volume can't exceed 10 TB. 
 Backup schedule Determine a backup schedule based on the type of volumes that you're backing up. For example, you might want to back up critical data that changes frequently more often than static data. 
 Retention Determine a retention policy for backups in the backup plan. As subsequent backups are created, keep in mind that you incur costs for each backup that you retain. Deleting older backups keeps costs down. 
 Backup plans Decide on the number of backup plans that you need for a policy. For example, you can have separate plans for daily backups, weekly, and monthly. 
 Interface Choose the UI, CLI, API, or Terraform for creating and managing your backups. 
 Billing Think about the number of backup snapshots that you want to take and other [billing considerations](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-about&interface=apisnapshots_vpc_considerations) as the number of backup snapshots grows. 
 Volume restore Evaluate when you might want to restore a volume from a backup. Keep in mind that restoring from a backup is a manual operation and not immediate such as a disaster recovery solution.
Scalability Difficult to extend beyond the data center. You can't change an existing storage tier. 
 Encryption At rest 
 Backup and recovery Set up periodic snapshots, replicate snapshots, duplicate storage, back up data to IBM Cloud Object Storage, or copy data to and from pod and containers. 
 Common use cases Mass or single file storage or file sharing across a single zone cluster. 
 Non-ideal use cases Multizone clusters or geographically distributed data. 







 Classic Block Storage for Classic 

Classic infrastructure



Classic Block Storage characteristics

 Characteristics Description 

 Multizone-capable No, as specific to a data center. Data can't be shared across zones, unless you implement your own data replication. 
 Ideal data types All 
 Data usage pattern Random read-write operations, sequential read-write operations, or write-intensive workloads 
 Access Via file system on mounted volume 
 Supported Kubernetes access writes ReadWriteOnce (RWO) 
 Performance Predictable due to assigned IOPS and size. IOPS are not shared between pods. 
 Consistency Strong 
 Durability High 
 Resiliency Medium as specific to a data center. Block storage server is clustered by IBM with redundant networking. 
 Availability Medium as specific to a data center. 
 Scalability Difficult to extend beyond the data center. You can't change an existing storage tier. 
 Encryption At rest. 
 Backup and recovery Set up periodic snapshots, replicate snapshots, duplicate storage, back up data to IBM Cloud Object Storage, or copy data to and from pod and containers. 
 Common use cases Stateful sets, backing storage when you run your own database, or high-performance access for single pods. 
 Non-ideal use cases Multizone clusters, geographically distributed data, or sharing data across multiple app instances. 







 File Storage for VPC 

Virtual Private Cloud



File Storage for VPC characteristics

 Characteristic Description 

 Multizone-capable No, as specific to a data center. Data can't be shared across zones, unless you implement your own data replication. 
 Ideal data types All 
 Data usage pattern Random read-write operations, sequential read-write operations, or write-intensive workloads 
 Access Via file system on mounted volume
* UI
* CLI
* API
* Terraform







 Replication failover 

Failover to the replica file share keeps your file share available if your source file share becomes unavailable. Failover switches the replication relationship so that the replica file share becomes the source file share and the source share becomes the read-only replica file share.

IBM Cloud® File Storage for VPC is available for customers with special approval to preview this service in the Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Dallas, Toronto, Washington, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Osaka, and Tokyo regions. Contact your IBM Sales representative if you are interested in getting access.



 Replication failover concepts 

When you create a replica file share, the replica pulls data from the source file share based on a replication schedule. The data on the replica file share is set to read-only. Failover switches the replication relationship. The read-only replica file share becomes the read/write source file share and the original share becomes read-only. You can now manage the share as a regular file share (for example, you can [adjust IOPS tiers](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-adjusting-share-iops)).

When you initiate a failover, you can choose what happens if the failover operation fails or times out.



* If you decide to keep the replication relationship, the system "falls back" to the source share, and the replication is in a failed status. The system attempts to replicate again at the next scheduled time. This option can be used for [routine maintenance](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-file-storage-failoverfs-failover-maintenance) on the primary site or when the site is having problems. You can fall back to the original share when the maintenance is complete and the site is stable again.
* If you decide to remove the replication relationship, the system splits the two file shares apart, and they become independent read/write file shares.
* Pre-defined and custom encryption proposals - Choose from multiple pre-defined proposals for a quick, secure VPN configuration with completely customizable Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Phase 1 and Phase 2 encryption settings.
* Monitoring - View the monitoring dashboard to see the current status of all tunnels and connections. You can also suspend and restart your individual VPN connections at any time.







 Client-to-site servers 

IBM Cloud Client VPN for VPC provides an open-source compatible client-to-site VPN solution that allows users to connect to IBM Cloud resources through secure, encrypted connections.

When your users are working remotely, traveling, or at a location without a site-to-site VPN connection, they can use an OpenVPN client to connect to VPN servers on your IBM Cloud VPC. For more information, see [About client-to-site VPN servers](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-vpn-client-to-site-overview).

Features include the following:



* Secure, encrypted connectivity - A TLS 1.2/1.3-based secure, encrypted way for your employees (or individuals) to access IBM Cloud VPC remotely. With VPN servers set up for client connections and support of Transit Gateway, you can also privately interconnect to Classic IaaS and other VPCs on IBM Cloud.
* High availability - Spans multiple availability zones for high throughput and resiliency.
* Multi-factor authentication - Apply to your VPN server and client connections to provide an added layer of security to meet compliance and security requirements.
* Operations and management - View the VPN server dashboard to monitor status and manage the lifecycle of VPN servers and their client connections. In different business scenarios, you can also delete clients that are connected to the servers.
See also [Extended SSH key encryption](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-metadata-api-change-log27-june-2023-metadata) in the VPC Instance Metadata API change log.







 20 June 2023 



 For all version dates 

Instance group integration with Network Load Balancer for VPC. Network load balancer is now integrated with instance groups to improve pool member scaling. When [creating](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc/latestcreate-instance-group) or [updating](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc/latestupdate-instance-group) an instance group for auto scaling, you can now also specify a network load balancer pool for the load_balancer_pool property. As before, if load_balancer_pool is set, load_balancer and application_port must also be set. As with application load balancers, the pool must not be used by another instance group in the VPC. When you configure a listener with a range of ports, the instance group's application port is used only for checking the health status of targets. For more information see [Creating an instance group for auto scaling](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-creating-auto-scale-instance-group).

In the future, load balancer profiles may be introduced that do not support instance groups. To ensure your clients will work reliably in the future, check that the new instance_groups_supported property on the [load balancer](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpcget-load-balancer) is true before specifying that load balancer or one of its pools.







 13 June 2023 



 For all version dates 

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. The VPC API methods that operate on routing tables have been updated to check for these new authorizations, instead of the broader VPC authorizations.
For more information, see [Creating an instance group for auto scaling](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-creating-auto-scale-instance-group).





 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)](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-about-vpe).

UI enhancements
: Improved name validation on provisioning pages
: Eliminated polling on data tables
: Enhanced data tables







 July 2020 



 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)](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-block-storage-profilestiers).

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)](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-expanding-block-storage-volumes).

Encrypted images (Beta)
: Import an encrypted custom image with beta support for the feature.