Today, IBM is announcing the general availability of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared (IC4V Shared).
IBM’s existing VMware solutions on the IBM Cloud provide ultimate management control for the client, giving them full access to the hypervisor on dedicated, single-tenant infrastructure. But what about those clients that want to offload that management to a service provider?
Now, with the addition of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared (IC4V Shared), which leverages VMware vCloud Director, we have more solution options for clients looking to offload hypervisor management and save costs by leveraging multi-tenant infrastructure.
Get started with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared
A cost-effective, self-service entry to cloud
IC4V Shared enables clients 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 Cloud 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 clients 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. Clients 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: Clients 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) is 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 is available monthly and will be available for longer terms in the future. Other resources—such as storage and network egress—are billed as per the actual usage, further enhancing the potential cost savings for dynamic workloads.
Native Veeam integration for cost-effective backup and disaster recovery
Veeam is now also available as a single click deployment from IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared. IBM Cloud manages the Veeam backup server, and Veeam is enabled by default. You can use Veeam Cloud Connect Replication for offsite replication as well, with per-VM pricing, flexible Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) options, end-to-end encryption, and staged and secure restore.
IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared is available now in the U.S. and is planned to roll out to Europe in June.