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Getting started with IBM Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

With IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), you can use the UI, CLI, and API to quickly provision virtual server instances with high network performance. VPC infrastructure contains a number of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings, including Virtual Servers for VPC.

Before you begin, set up your IBM Cloud account to access VPC. Make sure that your account is upgraded to a paid account.

Following are the overall steps to create and configure your VPC and other attached resources. For more detailed instructions, see Using the IBM Cloud console to create z/OS virtual server instances.

  1. Create your SSH key.
  2. Create a VPC.
  3. Create subnets in one or more zones. You can create subnets in suggested prefix ranges or in your own IP ranges that you bring to IBM Cloud.
  4. Attach a public gateway if you want to allow all resources in a subnet to communicate with the public internet.
  5. Configure an access control list (ACL) to limit the subnet's inbound and outbound traffic.
  6. Create virtual server instances with the vCPU, RAM, and instance storage (optional) that's right for your workload. When you're planning to provision virtual server instances for IBM Cloud VPC, refer to Planning for instances External link icon. Note that zIIP (z Integrated Information Processor) processors are not supported, and vCPUs for z/OS virtual server instances are general-purpose processors only.
  7. If you want more storage, create block storage volumes and attach them to your instances.
  8. To define the inbound and outbound traffic that is allowed for instances, configure their security groups.
  9. To enable your VPC to connect securely to another private network, such as your on-premises network or another VPC, create a virtual private network (VPN).
  10. If you want instances to be reachable from the internet, reserve and associate floating IP addresses.

For a general overview of the VPC infrastructure and related compute, networking, and storage concepts, see the following topics in IBM Cloud docs: