Functions

This section provides a brief introduction to the core functions of BMS. You can check if a certain function is available in a region on the management console.

Instance Family

An instance is a purchased BMS. Different instance types provide different compute capabilities, storage, and network performance. You can select whichever type best meets your service requirements. After you purchase a BMS, you can perform operations such as starting and stopping the BMS or conducting in-band monitoring on it. BMSs have x86 or Kunpeng CPUs. Huawei-developed high-performance physical servers with exclusive optimization algorithms provide a reliable hardware environment for the BMSs. You can choose from different BMS flavors based on your service requirements.

Instance Purchase

You can create a BMS that meets your basic requirements.
You can create a BMS that can be quickly provisioned.
You can create a BMS in a DeC if you have high requirements for security compliance.
You can create a private image containing a specific OS and applications and use it to create a BMS.

Networking

BMS network types include:

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
High-speed network
User-defined VLAN

Billing

Billing items

The billing items include BMSs, EVS disks (optional), and EIPs (optional).

Billing modes

BMSs are billed on a yearly/monthly basis. They cannot be billed on a pay-per-use basis. You can buy 10 months and get two free. If you intend to use BMSs for a long term, you can save more by specifying a longer duration.

Configuration changes

If you require additional storage space, you can either expand the capacity of EVS disks that are attached to a BMS or attach more EVS disks to the BMS. The additional storage space will be billed on a pay-per-use or yearly/monthly basis depending on the billing modes you specified for the EVS disks.

Renewal

For details about how to renew a BMS, see Renewals.

Images

An image is a template of a BMS environment. It contains an OS and runtime environment, and some pre-installed applications. An image file is a copy of all of the data in a system disk. Images can be classified as public, private, or shared.

Public images
Public images are provided by Huawei Cloud. They are adapted to the BMS service and come with a set of basic plug-ins preinstalled. These images are available to all users and compatible with most mainstream OSs.

Private images
A private image contains an OS, preinstalled public applications, and a user's personal applications. You can use a private image to create BMSs more quickly. Private images free you from redundant configuration tasks.

Shared images
A shared image is a private image other users share with you.

EVS Disks

To ensure services can be recovered quickly if anything happens, use an EVS disk as the system disk of a BMS because they enable you to provision a BMS faster.

A BMS with an EVS disk as the system disk has the following advanced features:

A BMS booted from an EVS disk can be provisioned in about 5 minutes.
CSBS backups ensure data security.
If it should ever crash, a BMS can be rebuilt to recover services quickly.
An image of a BMS can be exported to apply configurations of the BMS to other BMSs, eliminating redundant configuration tasks.

SSH Key Pairs

For system security, you are advised to use a key pair to authenticate any user who attempts to log in to a BMS. Use an existing key pair or create a new one for remote login authentication.

Creating a key pair

If no key pair is available, create one that contains a public and a private key in either of the following ways:

Create a key pair on the management console. The public key is stored in the system automatically, and the private key is stored locally by the user who created it. For details, see Create a Key Pair on the Management Console.

Use PuTTYgen to create a key pair. Both the public and private keys are stored locally. For details, see Create a Key Pair Using PuTTYgen. After a key pair is created, import it so that you can use it in the system.

Using an existing key pair

If there is already a key pair available locally, for example, a key pair generated using PuTTYgen, you can import the public key on the management console so that the public key file will be maintained by the system automatically. For details, see Import a Key Pair.

Adjusting Resource Quotas

Quotas are enforced for service resources on the platform to prevent unforeseen spikes in resource usage. Quotas can limit the quantity or capacity of resources available to users, such as the maximum number of BMSs or EVS disks that can be created.

You can request for a larger quota if the existing quota does not meet your service requirements.

Adding Tags

Tags are used to identify cloud resources, such as BMSs, images, and disks. If you have multiple types of cloud resources which are associated with each other, you can use tags to classify and manage them easily.

There are two ways you can add tags for a BMS:

During BMS creation
On the details page of an existing BMS

Server Monitoring

Server monitoring provided by Cloud Eye includes basic monitoring and OS monitoring. Basic monitoring refers to monitoring of metrics reported by servers (BMS does not support basic monitoring). OS monitoring provides system-wide, active monitoring. You can only use OS monitoring on a BMS if Cloud Eye Agent is installed on it. Agent uses less than 50 MB of memory and less than 1.5% of the CPU resources.

To meet the basic monitoring and O&M requirements for servers, more than 40 metrics are monitored, such as CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics.

Viewing Traces

Cloud Trace Service (CTS) is a log audit service for Huawei Cloud security. It allows you to collect, store, and query cloud resource operation records. You can use these records for security analysis, audit compliance, resource tracking, and fault locating.

Once CTS is enabled, it starts recording BMS operations. You can view operations recorded in the last seven days on the CTS management console.

APIs

BMS APIs include native OpenStack APIs and extension APIs.

A combination of the two types of APIs allows you to use all functions provided by BMS. For example, you can create a BMS using a native OpenStack API or an extension API.