Hi, I'm Bill Miller. I'd like to welcome you to this course. In this course, we're going to extend your Linux system administration skills into a private cloud implementation. Now this is going to be a comprehensive look at OpenStack concepts, the PowerVC product from IBM that enables power systems running Linux or any operating system to become part of or to become its own private Cloud. We start with a deep dive into the planning, installation, and maintenance of PowerVC. Then we move into PowerVC user interfaces, administrative tasks necessary to set up, and also to exploit PowerVCs capabilities. Then we close out with techniques used to create and deploy images, which is really the basis of the cloud administration piece of this, as a system administrator and even as a self-service cloud user. We'll see both administrative tasks for true system administration of the product, as well as setting up for and also exploiting the cloud user capabilities. Now in this module, I'll cover OpenStack and go into the first steps in understanding and implementing PowerVC. That is, what is PowerVC, and steps to plan for implementation. We'll cover the other topics in future videos. Let's start with an introduction to PowerVC and OpenStack. Now this is the layer that makes our goal of cloud enablement, automation, and self-service all possible. PowerVC has been around since late 2013. It goes through two major updates a year, plus maintenance releases between the major updates. It's been expanded, improved upon, and solidified over a very long time. PowerVC is based on OpenStack. That's an open-source cloud-enabling infrastructure as a service software stack that's been around since 2010. I refer to it oftentimes, and others have referred to it, as the cloud operating system. Now it's used by entities as diverse, major retailers, health care providers, airlines, governmental agencies, finance, more. Many organizations use PowerVC in their power shops. PowerVC leverages OpenStack to provide compute storage and networking controls in implementing cloud on power systems. The combination of PowerVC and OpenStack, it's well established in many locations, and it's used for efficiencies. Further, PowerVC simplifies the process of creating and managing virtual machines on a power system, providing a simple user friendly [inaudible] that does the complex orchestration with the HMC or Nova link, whatever the platform management product is, and storage devices as well as networking. Now this simplification breaks down barriers between different administrators, systems, network, storage in an organization. Now many of the components in OpenStack's layered architecture, as shown in the graphic, are used by PowerVC unchanged. If you understand OpenStack, or if you spend time understanding OpenStack, you'll understand much of how PowerVC manipulates the components that it manipulates through OpenStack. But in some cases, and primarily in the area of compute node management, that would be the Nova layer, and storage management, that's the Cinder layer, and networking which is the neutron layer, IBM specific code is included in PowerVC to provide cloud support that's specific to power systems. Communications to and from PowerVC are mostly carried out using REST API calls. Because of that, you'll find that specific minimum versions of the external components with which PowerVC interacts will be required. For example, communicating to a brocade san switch might be done by SSH depending on the versions of PowerVC and the brocade firmware. Be sure to check the links we've provided at the end of this video. You should be familiar with the knowledge center portal for PowerVC, where you can find the requirements for implementing with all the supported devices. You don't need to worry about memorizing any of that now, or maybe ever. But know where to find it for future reference. It's a great place for debugging and troubleshooting as well. But before we start a deeper look at PowerVC, let's have a quick overview of OpenStack. Do you have to be an OpenStack expert to implement and use PowerVC? Absolutely not. Is it helpful though if you're going to be a power cloud administrator to understand OpenStack, at least to navigate your way around OpenStack to understand where the components interact and what they do? Absolutely. Let's move on in a second to OpenStack component overview.
