Today, we are announcing IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared (IC4V Shared), a new solution that is planned to be available in beta in December 2019.
Currently, our client-managed VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) solution is designed to deliver extreme flexibility for our customers with root access down to the hypervisor level. With the addition of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared, we have a solution option where IBM Cloud will manage up to the hypervisor, performing all patches, upgrades, and monitoring.
IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared leverages VMware vCloud Director to help enable customers to extend their data centers to the cloud with ultimate capacity, flexibility, and scalability. Whether clients are looking to begin their cloud journey with a dev/test environment, a disaster recovery site, or a full enterprise grade hybrid cloud transformation, IC4V Shared is designed to provide a cost-effective, self-service entry to the cloud within minutes.
With IBM managing the infrastructure up to the hypervisor, clients don’t need to worry about managing patching, upgrades, or monitoring themselves, thereby enabling a renewed focus on innovation. This offering delivers a familiar look and feel so that customers can leverage their existing VMware resources, skills, and operational tooling.
This new solution is designed to provide the following value to our clients:
- Capacity, flexibility, and scalability: Pay for what you use. Customers can quickly spin up/down capacity based on their current needs, minimizing their unused capacity to save money.
- Cost-effective disaster recovery: Cost-efficient deployment option for a cloud disaster recovery (DR) site where virtual machines (VMs) are consumed for short periods of time with fluctuating capacity requirements.
- Low startup cost: Customers starting their cloud journey can start as small as 1vCPU and 1 GB RAM and expand to any extent when ready.
- Reduction in IT Expense and offloading Day 2 operations: Because IC4V Shared is IBM-managed, clients will no longer have to perform operations like patching, upgrading, and monitoring.
- Self-service: User-friendly interface to be productive from day one.
Consumption models
IBM Cloud VMware Solutions Shared (IC4V Shared) beta will be offered in two consumption models: On Demand and Reserved.
With On Demand, clients only pay for the compute they actually consume in an hourly pricing model. For Reserved, clients can “reserve” compute in advance in order to guarantee that their capacity is available when they need it. Billing for Reserved will be available monthly, yearly, or on a multi-year basis. Other resources—such as storage and network egress—will be billed as per the actual usage, further enhancing the potential cost savings for dynamic workloads.
In addition, we will also expand our single-tenant IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions (Dedicated) for those clients desiring a managed service in a single tenant model vs. a multi-tenant model. In this option, host nodes will be physically isolated to meet more stringent security and performance requirements. Customers will now have two choices for a single-tenant model—either our current client-managed or IBM Cloud-managed.
IBM Resiliency Services support
A key use case for IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared (IC4V Shared) includes back up and disaster recovery, two workload types that can benefit from a consumption-based billing model. We are excited to announce that IBM Business Resiliency Services has plans to include support for IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared in their roadmap, helping customers to achieve the dynamic scalability and consumption benefits of the cloud while continuing to meet their stringent business continuity objectives.
As customer expectations expand, enterprises are faced with the challenge of maintaining an always-on, 24/7/365 environment. Achieving this expectation is becoming more daunting with the rise of cyber and ransomware attacks coupled with the traditional IT outage factors. IBM Business Resiliency Services and IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared will help enable customers to meet their Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives. Clients will be able to leverage IBM Business Resiliency Services’ 50+ years of expertise in business continuity, data protection, and disaster recovery, coupled with the scalability of the IBM Cloud to provide large scale cloud bursting from test and dev to mission critical environments.
Get started
If you are interested in more information about the beta access to IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared, please fill out the form here.
Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.