vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
: For VMware vCenter Server instances with VMware vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7, in-place upgrade to vSphere 7.0 is now supported for select configurations. Not all hardware configurations are supported, and the upgrade cannot help you migrate from VMware NSX-V to NSX-T or from a nonconverged NSX-T topology to a converged NSX-T topology.

You must contact IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Support before and after you upgrade your instance.

IBM Cloud supports only Cascade Lake bare metal servers for vSphere 7.0 instances. You must ensure that all VMware ESXi servers have the proper firmware and drivers to support 7.0.

After you complete an upgrade to vSphere 7.0, you can add clusters and hosts to your upgraded instance. When you add a cluster or host to the upgraded instance, you must keep the original deployment configuration, naming, and network topology.

The following upgrade scenarios are supported:



* Adding NFS storage, hosts, and clusters (NFS or vSAN) on instances upgraded from vSphere 6.5 or 6.7
* Adding hosts and clusters on upgraded NSX-V or nonconverged NSX-T instances
* Adding hosts in an upgraded NFS or vSAN cluster



IBM Cloud recommends that you deploy a new vSphere 7.0 instance and migrate your current network topology and workload to the new instance.

VMware Solutions Dedicated - SAP-certified servers support for vSphere 7
: The following SAP-certified bare metal server models are now available for deployment with vSphere 7.0. These models are available for vCenter Server instances and clusters, and for VMware vSphere clusters.



* Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake, BI.S4.NW1500)
* Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake, BI.S4.NW3000)
* Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake)
* Quad Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake)



VMware Solutions Dedicated - 25 Gb uplink speed
The Terraform script that contains Kubernetes cluster namespaces fails as connection refused? 

 What’s happening 

When you Generate Plan for the Terraform script that contains cluster, used to work properly three months ago, but now the same Terraform script gets the following error:

"Error: Get "http://localhost/api/v1/namespaces/external-secrets":
dial tcp [::1]:80: connect: connection refused".

When compared the logs between successful and failed Generate Plan execution. Observed new versions picked up of providers, forced the script to the same version just to ensure a version change did not cause the error. Still the error persists.

 Why it’s happening 

This issue is from Kubernetes provider, there are many discussion around this error by different Cloud providers, but there is no definite solution.

 How to fix it 

Check the following references and solutions provided to fix the issue

References
: 

* Terraform [don’t use Kubernetes provider with your cluster resource](https://itnext.io/terraform-dont-use-kubernetes-provider-with-your-cluster-resource-d8ec5319d14a)
* Many [open issues on Kubernetes provider](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-provider-kubernetes/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fapi%2F)
* [Stack overflow issue](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70962800/error-post-http-localhost-api-v1-namespaces-kube-system-configmaps-dial-tc)



Based on previous experience following are the two workaround solution to fix.

Solution 1

If you are using provider authentication to Kuberentes something like

provider "kubernetes" {
config_path = data.ibm_container_cluster_config.cluster_config.config_file_path
}

Change the template as follows.
With the IAM integration, role-based access control now uses a site and organization IAM policy for VMware Solutions Shared resources.

IBM Cloud data center region and site availability for VMware Solutions Shared
: You can now select the region where your virtual data center instance is hosted and the IBM Cloud data center site where the virtual data center is hosted.

Platform management roles
: New IAM platform management roles are available for VMware Solutions offerings.

End of Marketing for NSX-V instance deployments
: VMware® support for all new VMware NSX-V deployments ended on 16 January 2022. However, VMware and IBM® worked closely to extend the existing NSX–V support until 31 December 2023. Beginning on 21 June 2022, you can no longer order new VMware vCenter Server with NSX-V instances.

End of Marketing for vSphere 6.7 instance deployments
: VMware support for all new VMware vSphere 6.7 deployments ends on 15 October 2022.

VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 3d support
: vSphere 7.0 Update 3d is available for newly deployed instances. For existing vSphere 7.0u2 instances and clusters, you can add either a vSphere 7.0u2 or a vSphere 7.0u3 host or cluster.

Updates to VMware vCenter Server instances
: The following upgrades are applied to newly deployed instances, clusters, and hosts.



* VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 3d (build 19482537)
* VMware vCenter Server Appliance 7.0 Update 3d (build 19480866)



Updates to VMware vSphere cluster names
: The requirements for vSphere cluster names are changed.

VMware ESXi firewall configuration for NFS - issue fixed
: IBM Cloud identified a problem with the VMware ESXi firewall configuration for NFS feature, which might cause some firewall rules to be lost during the update. This problem is now fixed.

Price calculation updates
If you have primary and secondary vCenter Server instances, then your VCSAs are configured to be in a single vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) domain. Each VCSA has a deployed VUM instance. The configuration properties that you modify are applied only to the VUM instance that you specify and are not propagated to the other instances in the group.

You can specify a VUM instance by selecting the name of the VCSA with which the VUM instance is registered from the navigation bar. You can also manage baselines, baseline groups, scan, and remediate only the inventory objects that are managed by the VCSA with which the VUM instance is registered.





 Related links 



* [VMware HCX solution architecture](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vmwaresolutions?topic=vmwaresolutions-hcx-archi-introhcx-archi-intro)
* [IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Demos](https://www.ibm.com/demos/collection/IBM-Cloud-for-VMware-Solutions/) (demonstrations)
These models are available for vCenter Server instances and clusters, and for VMware vSphere clusters.



* Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake, BI.S4.NW1500)
* Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake, BI.S4.NW3000)
* Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake)
* Quad Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake)



VMware Solutions Dedicated - 25 Gb uplink speed
: Enhanced support is now provided for the 25 Gb uplink speed option for vCenter Server instances and clusters, and VMware vSphere clusters:



* This option is now available for vSphere 7.0.
* More data centers now support this option.



VMware Solutions Dedicated - IBM Cloud data centers
: (Updated on 20 April 2021) The IBM Cloud data centers Sao Paulo 04 and Sao Paulo 05 are now available for deployment.

VMware Solutions Dedicated - IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads
: The following updates are available for vCenter Server multizone instances:



* You can select to use IBM-provided or your own licenses for vCenter Server Standard and vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses.
* You can specify an initial cluster name for your witness and consolidated clusters.
* You can optionally order an additional workload cluster and an edge services cluster to new vCenter Server multizone instances.
* You can add or remove the additional workload cluster or edge services cluster to existing vCenter Server multizone instances.
* You can add or remove VMware ESXi servers to and from your additional workload cluster.
* You can add or remove services to new or existing vCenter Server multizone instances.



VMware Solutions Dedicated - known issue for IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads
: For Mission Critical Workloads, a known issue with vCenter HA failover exists. If eth0 is not active on the passive node before failover is initiated, the passive node is isolated and fails to take over as the active node. vCenter HA might not activate eth0 when failover is initiated.

VMware Regulated Workloads
Linux and Windows benchmark scores 

Linux® and Windows® benchmark scores are measured on high-performance virtual servers for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) by using [CoreMark](https://www.eembc.org/coremark/faq.php). CoreMark is an industry standard benchmark that measures the performance of CPUs on physical machines and virtual servers that are offered by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers like IBM Cloud VPC.

While the current benchmark results are for Compute instance profiles, we expect the CoreMark scores to be similar for Balanced and Memory instance profiles with the same CPU count.



 Compute virtual server profiles 

Compute profiles offer a core to RAM ratio of 1 vCPU to 2 GiB of RAM ratio and are best for moderate to high web traffic workloads. Compute profiles are best for workloads with intensive CPU demands, such as high web traffic workloads, production batch processing, and front-end web servers.

You can provision virtual servers on Compute hosts with Broadwell, Skylake, or Cascade Lake processor types. The benchmark tests are run on all CPU types. The following tables show the benchmark scores for Linux and Windows virtual server Compute instance profiles.

Linux

Windows



Table 1. Linux benchmark for Compute profile family

 Profile CPU CPU MHz vCPUs Score Standard Deviation (%) Sample Count 

 cx2-2x4 Broadwell 2095.170 2 24690.74 3.76 2160 
 cx2-4x8 Broadwell 2095.148 4 49126.78 2.08 1560 
 cx2-8x16 Broadwell 2095.148 8 99210.04 1.47 1070 
 cx2-16x32 Broadwell 2095.148 16 197633.25 1.38 735 
 cx2-32x64 Broadwell 2095.148 32 389354.87 1.01 2600 
 cx2-48x96 Broadwell 2095.148 48 579164.89 1.81 3150 
 cx2-2x4 Skylake 2593.910 2 33762.35 3.05 1180
In most cases, this process involves backing up to virtual tapes and image catalogs. Note, you might need extra storage for the LPAR to host the image catalogs until they are moved to Cloud Object Storage.

The typical IBM i customer uses the following flow to back up LPARs and objects:



1. Use the 5733-ICC product to connect to Cloud Object Storage (COS) (2 times the disk capacity to hold the backup images).
2. Connect to IBM COS by following the steps mentioned in [Using Cloud Object Storage](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/power-iaas?topic=power-iaas-backup-strategiescos-over-directlink).
3. Complete the back up to COS by choosing the speed and resiliency that is required.



* [Working with ICC](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_72/icc/topics/iccucon_commands_cloud_overview.htm)
* [BRMS with Cloud Storage Solutions for i considerations and requirements](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_ibm_i_74/rzai8/rzai8brmscloudrequireandconsider.htm)
* [Data backup and recovery by using BRMS and IBM Cloud Storage Solutions for i](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_ibm_i_74/rzai8/rzai8backupandrecoveryusingBRMSandICC.htm)





For a complete tutorial on backing up and restoring IBM i VM data, see [Backing up and restoring data in an IBM i VM](https://cloud.ibm.com/media/docs/downloads/power-iaas-tutorials/PowerVS_IBMi_Backups_Tutorial_v1.pdf).





 Using Cloud Object Storage 

The preferred way to connect to Cloud Object Storage (COS) from a VM in Power Systems Virtual Server are as follows:



1.
If you want to install IBM Spectrum Protect Plus yourself, see [IBM Spectrum Protect Plus documentation](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spp).

REST API updates
: The following API updates are available:



* The /v2/supported_config_options REST API displays a list of supported configuration versions.
* The /v2/disk_types REST API is updated to show that SED disks are only for Skylake servers.
* A number of REST APIs, such as /v1/vcenters/nsxt include the parameters disks and vsan_cache_disks. For these APIs and for Cascade Lake servers only, do not specify SED disks types.



New architecture documentation
: The following technical documents are now available:



* VMware RYO architecture on VPC
* Interconnectivity for VMware workloads on VPC
* Fortinet FortiGate solution architecture



User interface updates and enhancements
: Various error messages and tooltip enhancements are available to assist you in selecting the appropriate setting on the user interface.







 2021 



 13 December 2021 

NSX-T Data Center SP license availability
: Starting with the 4.5 release, VMware NSX-T Data Center SP license editions are available for new instances for the following VMware Solutions offerings. Existing instances continue to use the previous NSX licenses for all new clusters and hosts.



* VMware Solutions Dedicated instances offer Data Center SP Base, Data Center SP Professional, Data Center SP Advanced, or Data Center SP Enterprise Plus.
* Security and Compliance Readiness Bundle instances offer Data Center SP Professional, Data Center SP Advanced, or Data Center SP Enterprise Plus.
* VMware Regulated Workloads offer Data Center SP Advanced or Data Center SP Enterprise Plus.



: NSX-T Data Center SP license restrictions



* License upgrade is not available for NSX-T Data Center SP license edition.
* Automated deployment of the VMware HCX service is not supported for VMware vCenter Server instances with the NSX-T Data Center SP Enterprise Plus license edition. However, you can manually deploy HCX outside of the VMware Solutions console.
For more information about the VLANs, see the Physical network design section in [Physical infrastructure design](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vmwaresolutions?topic=vmwaresolutions-design_physicalinfrastructure).







 Physical storage design 

The following section describes the configuration of the attached storage device that is present in the IBM Cloud. The attached storage device complements the existing vCenter Server solution. As a result, locally attached disks that are internal to the physical hosts aren't presented.





 Attached storage performance 

Performance and Endurance storage are IBM Cloud storage solutions that are designed to support high I/O applications that require predictable levels of performance. This predictable performance is achieved through the allocation of protocol-level input/output operations per second (IOPS) to individual volumes.

IOPS ranging from 100 through 96,000 can be ordered with storage sizes of 20 GB - 24 TB. Performance and Endurance storage volumes are available for both block storage and file storage.

In this design, the vCenter Server solution offers Endurance storage for attached storage. As a result, you can select and attach (through automation) Endurance NFS exports ranging in size from 20 GB to a maximum of 24 TB. The IBM Cloud allows up to 96 vSphere ESXi hosts to connect to a single Endurance NFS export.

Endurance is available in three IOPS performance tiers to support varying application needs.

After an NFS share is ordered, it can be resized or reconfigured to allow for more or less IOPS.

For detailed IOPS options, see the Storage settings section in [Ordering vCenter Server instances](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vmwaresolutions?topic=vmwaresolutions-vc_orderinginstance-req).

In addition to the tiers of storage, IBM Cloud Endurance storage supports a wide selection of application needs, including snapshots and replication, and encryption at rest in the IBM Cloud data center locations.





 Related links 



* [Overview of VMware Solutions](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vmwaresolutions?topic=vmwaresolutions-solution_overview)
Customers that write distributed firewall rules for NSX-V might use vCenter-specific objects (for example, clusters, folders) which are not available in NSX-T. Those rules must be rewritten to ensure that the overall micro-segmentation design and granularity are maintained after NSX-T migration.
* Are you using IP Sets and Security Groups? You must create new security groups in NSX-T based on the security groups in NSX-V. You must identify IP sets and security groups with exclusions, and security groups with the dynamic inclusion rule that contains multiple criteria.
* Are you using firewall rules based on security groups that dynamically include VMs based on security tags? In NSX-T, security tags are entirely managed by NSX-T. The firewall rules based on security groups that dynamically include VMs based on security tags are not effective until the security tags are applied to the VMs.
* What types of NSX Edge services, such as firewall, L2VPN, load balancing, are in use? These services must be re-created in the NSX-T environment.
* Are you using the NSX-V IPFIX feature to capture traffic flows that are sourced from and destined to the VMs running on NSX-V logical switches? You must analyze the ability of NSX-T to replace the packet flow forwarding feature.
* Are you using OSPF as dynamic routing protocol? You must assess the use of BGP to replace OSPF.
* Are you using DLR native L2 bridging to bridge L2 traffic between VMs and bare metal servers through a distributed virtual switch? Search for alternative solutions of bridging in NSX-T.
* Do you need gradual migration of VMs from NSX-V to NSX-T, and not a full subnet migration? By using an NSX-V to NSX-T bridge, allows VMs in the same L2 domain to be migrated from an NSX-V logical switch to NSX-T segment. Alternatively, L2VPN or VMware HCX™ can be used to provide L2 connectivity.







 Related links 



* [cITopus for NSX](https://spjsolutions.com)
For persistent storage solutions, see [Planning highly available persistent storage](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/openshift?topic=openshift-storage-plan).

Because you have full control over the isolation and resource consumption for your workloads, you can use bare metal machines to achieve HIPAA and PCI compliance for your environment.

Bare metal seems awesome! What's stopping me from ordering one immediately?
: Bare metal servers are more expensive than virtual servers, and are best suited for high-performance apps that need more resources and host control. Bare metal worker nodes are also not available for VPC clusters.

Bare metal servers are billed monthly. If you cancel a bare metal server before the end of the month, you are charged through the end of that month. After you order or cancel a bare metal server, the process is completed manually in your IBM Cloud infrastructure account. Therefore, it can take more than one business day to complete.





 Available flavors for bare metal 

Worker node flavors vary by cluster type, the zone where you want to create the cluster, the container platform, and the infrastructure provider that you want to use. To see the flavors available in your zone, run ibmcloud oc flavors --zone <zone>. You can also review available [VM](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/openshift?topic=openshift-planning_worker_nodesvm) or [SDS](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/openshift?topic=openshift-planning_worker_nodessds) flavors.

Bare metal machines are optimized for different use cases such as data-, GPU-, or RAM-intensive workloads.

After you create GPU bare metal worker nodes in your Red Hat OpenShift version 4 cluster, [install the Node Feature Discovery and NVIDIA GPU operators for your cluster version](https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/gpu-operator/getting-started.html).

Choose a flavor, or machine type, with the correct storage configuration to support your workload. Some flavors have a mix of the following disks and storage configurations.
However, an upgrade cannot be supported for all hardware combinations, will not accomplish a migration from NSX-V to NSX-T, and will enable only limited VMware Solutions capabilities at the vSphere 7.0 level.

Instead, IBM Cloud recommends that you deploy a new vSphere 7.0 instance and migrate your current network topology and workload to the new instance.

Migrating your workload to a new instance is especially recommended if you want to perform a hardware refresh, if you want to migrate from NSX–V to NSX–T, or if you want to migrate your existing NSX–T topology with separate management and workload clusters to a converged topology.

VMware Solutions Dedicated - support for VMware vSAN stretched clusters for vSphere 7.0 Update 1a and NSX-T 3.1
: VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus 7.0 Update 1a and VMware NSX-T 3.1 are included when you order a VMware vCenter Server stretched cluster across a multizone region. The stretched cluster is deployed as a single consolidated cluster capable of hosting both management and workload clusters.

With the combination of consolidated cluster and support for a 3-host RAID 1 configuration, you can deploy an instance with a minimum of eight hosts when you use NFS storage for your witness cluster, or nine hosts when you use vSAN storage for your witness cluster.

Extra features for stretched clusters are planned for future releases, including support for VMware Regulated Workloads, edge services clusters, more workload clusters, and optional add-on services.

VMware Solutions Dedicated - updates for VMware NSX
: Review the following information about vCenter Server with NSX-T instances for the 4.0 release.



* New instances of vCenter Server with NSX-T are provisioned with NSX-T 3.1.
* Day 2 operations continue to be supported for vCenter Server with NSX-T 2.5.1 instances with restrictions.
* If you want to upgrade your existing vCenter Server with NSX-T instance, IBM Cloud recommends that you upgrade directly to NSX-T 3.1 bypassing NSX-T 3.0.x.



VMware Solutions Dedicated - IBM Cloud data centers
: Review the following updates for IBM Cloud data centers.
Why does my service binding to a Db2 Enterprise instance fail? 

  What’s happening 

You cannot create a Code Engine service binding with a Db2 Enterprise service instance when you use the CLI or API. You receive a failed error message.

  Why it’s happening 

Db2 Enterprise does not support the IBM writer role that is used by default for Code Engine service bindings.

  How to fix it 

Try one of these solutions.



1.  If you are using the CLI to create the service binding with the Db2 Enterprise service instance to your Code Engine app or job, use the --role Manager option when you run the [ibmcloud ce application bind](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/codeengine?topic=codeengine-clicli-application-bind) command or the [ibmcloud ce job bind](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/codeengine?topic=codeengine-clicli-job-bind) command.
2.  Use the console to create the service binding with the Db2 Enterprise service instance to your Code Engine app or job, and specify the role of Manager.