Private companies and public agencies are moving to hybrid cloud to leverage the benefits of both on-premises infrastructure and the cloud, while mitigating the limitations and challenges of each.

This approach provides a more flexible, scalable, cost-effective and secure computing environment that can help organizations better meet their business needs.

In this context, IBM Infrastructure is playing an interesting role by being available with solutions on-premises and in IBM Cloud. This blog post is the beginning of a short series that will go through the main solutions, starting from IBM LinuxONE.

Why choose LinuxONE for your data center and in IBM Cloud?

IBM LinuxONE is an enterprise-grade Linux® server with a unique processor and system architecture designed to meet the needs of mission-critical workloads. It brings together IBM’s experience in building sustainable, secure and scalable systems with the openness of the Linux operating system.

With a single LinuxONE system, you can do the work of up to 2000 x86 cores on a single platform that fits in your data center. Consolidation of data and applications onto a centralised infrastructure such as LinuxONE can contribute the following:

• Create a more environmentally sustainable IT environment (winning a SEAL Award) with up to 75% less energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
• Reduce data center floor space up to 50% and other data center costs by offering a smaller footprint.
• Reduce software licenses costs and provide savings on server administration.

LinuxONE can offer a higher level of security, protecting data and applications in isolated logical Virtual Servers with EAL5+ certification and encrypting all data at rest, in flight and in-use against internal and external threats (with pervasive encryption and confidential computing capabilities) without impacting SLAs.

Companies are choosing to use LinuxONE for a variety of Linux-based workloads for database scalability (like Citi or Boero), confidential computing solutions to protect sensitive data and applications (like Metaco and Phoenix), or application modernisation with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (like Sysdig).

IBM Cloud is the only cloud provider that offers LinuxONE

This enables clients to extend their on-prem LinuxONE production environment with additional instances in the public cloud. Alternatively, clients can start small on IBM Cloud and grow with flexibility and speed, operating on a pay-per-use basis with hourly billing and all the security advantages of private networking.

Deployment options:

• LinuxONE Virtual Server: Available in the catalog. This offers fast-provisioning virtualised compute capacity with the highest network speeds and the most secure, software-defined networking resources available on the IBM Cloud.

This offering complements the already existing Hyper Protect Services in IBM Cloud (which are also based on LinuxONE technology). This provides confidential computing solutions to protect all your sensitive applications and data with Trusted Execution Environments (TEE). Each TEE can protect up to 16TB of memory (i.e. all your software stack) by leveraging Secure Execution and Hardware Security Modules, certified at industry-leading FIPS 140-2 Level 4.

With these solutions, you can ensure extreme data confidentiality for banking solutions, digital assets custody, protection of industrial and manufacturing intellectual property, healthcare data, and all sensitive workloads in highly regulated industries.

Get started today by spinning up a LinuxONE solution in IBM Cloud

Expand your existing environment (e.g., in development and test) or start exploring the technology by deploying your first applications—starting small and then scaling up in IBM Cloud or on-premises:

LinuxONE Cloud Native Services:

• LinuxONE Virtual Server for VPC

LinuxONE Confidential Computing Services:

• Hyper Protect Crypto Services (with Unified Key Orchestrator)
• Hyper Protect Virtual Server for VPC (with Secure Execution)
• Hyper Protect Virtual Servers (Classic, based on Secure Service Container)

In IBM Cloud VPC, clients can leverage the free promo code VPC1000.

Get started with LinuxONE today

More details on LinuxONE solutions can be found at the following links:

• Moor Insights & Strategy white paper on the sustainability, security, and TCO benefits of the LinuxONE Platform
• LinuxONE Emperor 4 carbon footprint report
• IBM Redbooks: Securing your Critical Workloads with IBM Hyper Protect Services

The IBM Technology team can also collaborate with clients to co-create customised solutions that fit business requirements, design architectures, and deliver MVPs up to the implementation of a full-scale production environment.

Get started with LinuxONE with IBM Cloud and connect today with the IBM z Client Acceleration Team for technical support.