Empowering Your Hybrid Cloud Journey
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are constantly seeking innovative solutions to optimize their IT infrastructure while maintaining control over their data and resources. IBM has risen to this challenge with its groundbreaking offering: IBM® Power® Virtual Server Private Cloud. This cutting-edge solution combines the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing with the security and compliance benefits of on-premises infrastructure, providing a truly unique hybrid cloud experience.
The Power of Hybrid: Cloud Experience Meets On-Premises Control
IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud is an as-a-service offering that brings the cloud experience directly to your data center. It provides a highly prescriptive compute, storage, and network infrastructure that resides within your facility but is managed using IBM Cloud®. This innovative approach allows organizations to leverage the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining full control over their data and meeting stringent regulatory requirements.
Key Features and Benefits
1. IBM Cloud Experience: The offering provides a simplified hybrid cloud experience through consistent user interfaces, including command-line interface (CLI), application programming interface (API), user interface (UI), Terraform, and billing. This unified approach allows you to provision and manage virtual machines (VMs) and related infrastructure seamlessly, whether they’re in the cloud or on-premises.
2. Private and Secure: With all infrastructure and data residing in your data center, this solution meets the most stringent data sovereignty, regulatory, and security needs. It’s an ideal choice for organizations in highly regulated industries or those with strict data protection requirements.
3. Metered Consumption: Embracing the cloud model of pay-as-you-go, the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud offers metered consumption for compute, memory, and storage. Each pod has a committed spend, and your monthly usage burns it down, providing cost predictability and flexibility.
4. Complete Solution: IBM delivers a comprehensive package, including rack, servers, storage, network equipment, and software, all integrated into a pod. This pod comes pre-configured and ready to connect to your network, significantly reducing deployment time and complexity.
5. Streamlined IT Operations: By providing a fully managed solution up to (but not including) your VMs, IBM allows your IT team to focus on business-critical tasks rather than infrastructure management. IBM Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) handle health checks, monitoring, security, firmware, and infrastructure updates, reducing the need for specialized IT skills in-house.
6. Flexible Configuration: Whether you need a small, single-rack solution or a larger, multi-rack deployment, IBM offers options to suit your needs. You can choose from fixed configurations for small and medium sizes, with the flexibility to upgrade within a pod or add additional pods as your requirements grow.
7. Seamless Hybrid Integration: The Power Virtual Server Private Cloud integrates smoothly with IBM Power Virtual Server, IBM Cloud, and other on-premises infrastructure, providing a true hybrid cloud environment.
Architecture and Infrastructure Options
The Power Virtual Server Private Cloud is available in two primary configurations: small pods and medium pods.
Small Pods
– Single 42U rack configuration
– Server options: IBM Power S1022 or Power E1050
Medium Pods
– 2-rack or 4-rack form factor
– Server options: Power S1022, E1050, or E1080
These options allow organizations to choose the right size and performance level for their specific workload requirements.
Network Architecture
The solution employs a sophisticated network architecture that ensures secure communication between your on-premises infrastructure and the IBM Cloud control plane:
1. Management Plane: A secure control plane connects your data center to IBM Cloud using either IBM Cloud Direct Link or site-to-site VPN with IPsec. This connection is used solely for management operations and is completely isolated from client application data.
2. Data Plane: A separate, isolated client network handles your workloads’ data traffic, ensuring that sensitive information never leaves your network.
3. Share Nothing Architecture: Each client pod has its own unique set of corresponding IBM Cloud resources, including VPC and Direct Link connection, ensuring complete isolation from other clients.
Performance and Connectivity Requirements
To ensure optimal performance, the total round-trip time between IBM Cloud and your data center must be less than or equal to 200 milliseconds, with a connection bandwidth of 1 Gbps.
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
While the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud provides infrastructure-level high availability through spare compute nodes for hosting VMs during maintenance events, clients are responsible for implementing operating system and application-level high availability and disaster recovery solutions.
High Availability Options
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability
– SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability
– Middleware and solution-based technologies
Disaster Recovery Options
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability
– SUSE Linux Enterprise Clustered Disaster Recovery
– IBM PowerHA® for AIX Enterprise Edition with Geographic Logical Volume Manager (GLVM) mirroring
Backup and Restore
Clients are responsible for backing up and restoring VM operating systems and application data. Solutions like IBM Storage Protect (formerly IBM Spectrum® Protect) can be utilized for these operations.
The IBM Cloud Advantage
By leveraging the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud, organizations can tap into the vast ecosystem of IBM Cloud services and capabilities. This includes access to cutting-edge AI and machine learning tools, robust analytics platforms, and a wide array of development and modernization services. The ability to seamlessly integrate these cloud-based services with on-premises workloads opens up new possibilities for innovation and digital transformation.
Use Cases and Industry Applications
The Power Virtual Server Private Cloud is particularly well-suited for several key use cases and industries:
1. Financial Services: Banks and insurance companies can leverage the solution to maintain strict data sovereignty while modernizing their core systems and exploring cloud-native technologies.
2. Healthcare: Medical institutions can keep sensitive patient data on-premises while utilizing cloud services for advanced analytics and AI-driven diagnostics.
3. Government Agencies: Public sector organizations can maintain control over classified information while benefiting from the agility and scalability of cloud computing.
4. Manufacturing: Companies can keep critical operational data and systems on-site while leveraging cloud services for supply chain optimization and predictive maintenance.
5. Retail: Retailers can maintain control over customer data and transaction processing systems while utilizing cloud services for inventory management and personalized marketing campaigns.
The Future of Hybrid Cloud
As businesses continue to navigate the complex landscape of digital transformation, solutions like the IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud will play an increasingly crucial role. By bridging the gap between on-premises infrastructure and cloud computing, this offering provides a pathway for organizations to modernize their IT environments at their own pace, without compromising on security or control.
The ability to maintain sensitive workloads on-premises while seamlessly integrating with cloud services positions the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud as a cornerstone of future hybrid cloud strategies. As edge computing and 5G technologies continue to evolve, this hybrid approach will become even more critical, allowing organizations to process data closer to the source while leveraging the power of centralized cloud resources.
Conclusion
IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud represents a significant leap forward in hybrid cloud technology. By bringing the cloud experience to your data center, it offers the best of both worlds: the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing combined with the security and control of on-premises infrastructure.
For organizations looking to embark on or accelerate their hybrid cloud journey, the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud provides a compelling solution. It allows businesses to modernize their IT infrastructure, embrace cloud-native technologies, and drive innovation while maintaining full control over their most sensitive data and workloads.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, solutions like this will be instrumental in helping organizations stay agile, secure, and competitive. The Power Virtual Server Private Cloud is not just a technology offering; it’s a strategic enabler for businesses looking to thrive in the digital age.
By leveraging this innovative solution, organizations can focus on what matters most – driving business value and innovation – while leaving the complexities of infrastructure management to IBM’s expert teams. As we look to the future, the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud stands as a testament to IBM’s commitment to empowering businesses with cutting-edge technology solutions that address real-world challenges and unlock new possibilities.
Credit and thanks to:
Hariganesh Muralidharan – Senior Technical Staff Member in the IBM Power team.
Joe Cropper – IBM Distinguished Engineer in the IBM Power software development organization.
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