Unable to create PowerVS VSI using "-EMPTY" special values for image ID

[smatzek]

Community Note

• Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 reaction to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request
• Please do not leave "+1" or other comments that do not add relevant new information or questions, they generate extra noise for issue followers and do not help prioritize the request
• If you are interested in working on this issue or have submitted a pull request, please leave a comment

Terraform CLI and Terraform IBM Provider Version

Terraform v1.14.0
on darwin_arm64

• provider registry.terraform.io/ibm-cloud/ibm v1.85.0

Affected Resource(s)

• ibm_pi_instance

Terraform Configuration Files

Please include all Terraform configurations required to reproduce the bug. Bug reports without a functional reproduction may be closed without investigation.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    ibm = {
      source  = "IBM-Cloud/ibm"
      version = "~>1.85.0"
    }
  }
  required_version = ">=1.5"
}
variable "ibmcloud_api_key" {
  description = "The IBM Cloud platform API key needed to deploy IAM enabled resources."
  type        = string
  sensitive   = true
}

variable "region" {
  description = "IBM Cloud Region where resources will be provisioned"
  type        = string
  default     = "us-east"
}

variable "zone" {
  description = "IBM Cloud zone where resources will be provisioned"
  type        = string
  default     = "wdc07"
}
provider "ibm" {
  ibmcloud_api_key = var.ibmcloud_api_key
  region           = var.region
  zone             = var.zone
  ibmcloud_timeout = 60
}

data "ibm_resource_instance" "client_workspace" {
  provider = ibm
  name     = "smatzek-nsg"
  service  = "power-iaas"
}

resource "ibm_pi_instance" "test-instance" {
    pi_cloud_instance_id = data.ibm_resource_instance.client_workspace.guid
    pi_memory = "4"
    pi_processors = "0.25"
    pi_proc_type = "shared"
    pi_instance_name = "sam"
    pi_image_id = "IBMI-EMPTY"
    pi_deployment_type = "VMNoStorage"
    pi_sys_type           = "s922"
    pi_network {
      network_id = "eb847ec0-62e3-40ae-88af-c716902f3ea8"
    }
}

Debug Output

https://gist.github.com/smatzek/3ea6f8bb10bbc576365cd74afb2d85ac

Panic Output

Expected Behavior

The instance should have been created as an empty IBM i.
Per the provider doc, specifying:

    pi_image_id = "IBMI-EMPTY"
    pi_deployment_type = "VMNoStorage"

should work.

It seems that the provider is looking up the image ID and not finding it. I'm not sure if the provider needs to add special handling code for this to not lookup the image ID in this case and just pass the value to the create API, or if the image list API needs to return it. I'm not sure how the CLI or the GUI is handling this special image ID value.

Actual Behavior

Failed unable to find the image.

Steps to Reproduce

1. terraform apply

Important Factoids

References

• #0000

[ismirlia]

@smatzek We think this is an issue with our storage team. It seems that the empty images are not our datacenters currently. They are working on it.

[smatzek]

Thanks for replying @ismirlia. The creation of empty VSIs works from the GUI, the CLI, and the API when it doesn't work from Terraform so I'm not sure it's the backend.

I just created an empty IBM i VSI in a workspace where I have not created an empty one before using the CLI. The image list and image catalog list did not show the -EMPTY images.

The CLI call I made was: ic pi ins cr sam --deployment-type VMNoStorage --image IBMI-EMPTY -m 8 -r shared -p 0.25 -t tier5k -s s922 -n prod

The CLI API trace file shows that it made one and only one API call for that CLI command, and it passed in the image ID as "IBMI-EMPTY" on the API call. The creation was successful.

The API trace output of the CLI is here:
https://gist.github.com/smatzek/71d6b50218f5b88a7e831be6bf1e75f7

I think the provider likely needs to do special handling to not try and lookup the imageID in the list of available images when the deployment type is VMNoStorage.