Create a Bare Metal Instance

The following steps are applicable to creating a bare metal instance.

If you need a bare metal instance, you can follow the steps as shown below.

Prerequisites

• You have signed up an account with your email and sign in to zenConsole.

• You are highly recommended to plan the network in advance, especially the public CIDR blocks and the private IP ranges of subnets and VPCs.

• See Bare Metal Billing for more details about pricing of bare metal instances.

Procedures

On the upper left corner of zenConsole, go to Products > Bare Metal > Bare Metal Instance > Create Bare Metal Instance. The overall steps of creating a bare metal instance is shown below. For detailed operations, please refer to the links of specific chapters.

Create a Bare Metal Instance

Step 1 - Basic Configuration

1. Instance Pricing Model

Subscription model is supported for now. You prepay the bill in each subscription term before you can use them. The longer the subscription term, the bigger the discount. You can select the subscription term in Step 4 - Order Confirmation.

Note

You will not be able to terminate or downgrade service until the end of your subscription term.

2. Instance Location

Bare metal instances are zone-specific resources and you need to provision your instances in specific zones in cities. You can filter the zones by different conditions.

If you haven't found the location you need, click Restock Inventory on the right.

See Select a Location for more details.

3. Instance Specification

Select your instance specification according to actual needs. Each model contains a certain amount of free bandwidth or data transfer in the order, and the actual display shall prevail. You can check the details in Network configuration.

If you haven't found the specification you need, click Restock Inventory on the right.

See Models, Zones & Operating System for more details.

4. Instance Operating System

Ubuntu, CentOS, Windows, Debian, ESXi and Custom-iPXE are supported. You can also install the operating system later using an ISO file via IPMI access after creating the instance.

See Models, Zones & Operating System for more details.

Note

Instances with OS of ESXi or Windows can not communicate with others in a VPC. However, you can manually achieve communication.

5. RAID Setup

Several physical disks can be combined into an array for better speed and fault tolerance. Zenlayer supports the most common RAID types: 0, 1, 5, and 10.

See Set up RAID for more details.

Note

• You should have at least 2 drives to set up RAID.

• The S model and models of LCC, LCE and LCG does not support RAID.

6. Partiton Layout

Create and format hard disk partitions (volume) to better use your storage space.

See Create Partitions for more details.

7. Login Credential Setup

Set up the ways to log in to your instance. Root password, SSH keys and custom password are all supported. Please keep your password safe.

See Set Login Credentials for more details.

8. Instance Name and Quantity

Label your instance and hostname and select the quantity to create instances with the same configurations in batches.

Name and Quantity

Step 2 - Network Configuration

1. Public Network Setup

If the included free bandwidth or data transfer is not enough, you can purchase more bandwidth or data transfer over public network.

See Set up Public Network for more details.

2. Private Network Setup

If you want to run your instances in private network, you can add instances into a subnet for Layer 2 network provisioning and into a VPC for Layer 3 network provisioning.

See Set up Private Network for more details.

3. NIC Setup

Expand More Settings to label your public and private Network Interface Card (NIC) if needed. You can also modify them in detailed information of instances.

Step 3 - Add-on Information

1. Elastic IPs

You can check 1 × Elastic IPv4 address and select the quantity to purchase.

2. Resource Group

Assigning the instance to a resource group allows you to better organize your instances and manage team member permissions.

Step 4 - Order Confirmation

1. Subscription Term

Subscription Term

The longer term you subscribe, the more discount you enjoy. Please note that the term-based discount is only applied to instances and certain add-on services.

2. Promo Code

If you have a promo code, you can apply it to enjoy the higher discount compared with term-based discount. The instances applied the promo code discount can enjoy the discount in subsequent renewals.

Review your order resources and summary. If there are no problems, please read through the policy documents and check the agreement.

Result

Installation typically takes a few minutes. Once installation is complete, your instance is ready for use.

Note

• Please pay close attention to your email as an IPMI password will be sent if you choose a login credential of system-generated root password.

• Creation may fail and you will get order refunded. Please check the elastic IP list, instance list and orders to confirm.

What to do next

You can check and manage your BMC instances in Bare Metal > Bare Metal Instance.

1. In Actions, you can log in to IPMI, power on/off instances, reboot instances, change OS, view order and unsubscribe/resubscribe instances.

2. Click the name of instance, and you can perform the following operations:

   • View hardware health care and other usage information in Performance.

   • View basic configurations about network, orders, and so on in Information.

   • View public and private networking settings, and so on in Networking.

   • View operating system reinstalling and IPMI login in OS & IPMI.

   • View logs in Audit Logs.

Note

Currently for some models of DELL's server, due to differences in statistical methods and dimensions, the performance data displayed may vary slightly from other sources, primarily concerning I/O usage, memory usage and CPU usage.

You can refer to the chapter of Monitoring performance index of CPU, memory, and input output modules in Dell's official docs for more details.