Since the 2019 launch of IBM Power® Systems Virtual Server, industry leaders have used the offering to successfully expand their on-premises servers to modern-day hybrid cloud infrastructures.

The IBM Power Systems Virtual Server offering is intentionally designed for businesses that want to quickly adopt, upgrade or expand their on-premises infrastructures economically to IBM Power Systems in order to competitively differentiate their business. With data centers around the world and by using Pay-As-You-Go or Savings Plan subscriptions, IBM Power Systems Virtual Server provides clients with the convenience required to modernize and protect their on-premises development, test and production environments. 

While using IBM Power Systems Virtual Server, clients don’t have to worry about hardware management and maintenance because IBM takes care of that for them. Therefore, they are able to spend extra time focused on scaling and modernizing the capabilities of their IBM AIX®, IBM i and Linux® workloads with readily available access to services offered by IBM Cloud®, such as Red Hat® OpenShift®.

This blog series explores IBM Power Systems Virtual Server and how it’s changing the way enterprises manage mission-critical workloads. For this first blog post, we are looking at how our current Power clients benefit from this innovative offering. 

Virtual server functionality for on-premises users

We’ve invested in the power of hybrid cloud to help enable Power Systems users to have an even more accessible, more reliable and specialized experience that’s distinctive to modernization.

The IBM Power Systems Virtual Server offering is designed to be an extension of Power Systems on-premises environments and a frictionless path to hybrid cloud. It provides access and connectivity to Power Systems in a hosted virtualized environment while maintaining the dependability and reputation Power Systems customers have grown to appreciate on-premises. 

Users leave server, storage and network management to IBM — offering the same robust level of security and virtualization isolation as on-premises Power Systems deployments by using the industry-leading security of the IBM PowerVM® hypervisor. We combine renowned IBM security with this offering — because our clients’ security is one of the most vital components to our virtual servers.

Today’s enterprises must stay flexible to competitively meet intensive workload demands. That’s why we developed a variety of ways customers can economically consume capacity across the worldwide data centers, including discounted Savings Plan subscriptions and Pay-As-You-Go options. With the Pay-As-You-Go model, clients have no commitments and use IBM Power Systems Virtual Server data center capacity and resources as needed, provisioning POWER9™ virtualized images or logical partitions (LPARs) in the event of seasonal or timely business changes to manage high and low traffic on demand. This provides the ability to add and remove capacity as needed and only pay for what you use, when you use it. This versatility is beneficial when creating developer test environments for IBM AIX, IBM i and Linux workloads. Deprovisioning these LPARs once testing is complete then helps lower costs.

When it comes to mission-critical workloads, Power Systems users know compromising performance isn’t an option. Enterprises can now run workloads alongside their on-premises system. Plus, since IBM Power Systems Virtual Server has been developed to be an extension of on-premises servers, there is no need to reformat workloads to run on IBM Power Systems Virtual Server. This minimizes downtime and time to value.

The ideal virtual server for SAP

IBM Power Systems Virtual Server is the certified off-premises Power solution for SAP HANA® and SAP NetWeaver® platform workloads. Thanks to the power that lies within our virtual servers, our clients can scale up to 143 cores and 22.5TB of RAM, helping enable the development of intensive production and mission-critical workloads. IBM Power Systems Virtual Server also helps enterprises accelerate migration to the SAP S/4 HANA system, which is mandated to occur by 2027.

Reliability

Power has been known for many generations for its unmatched reliability and availability [1], and IBM Power Systems Virtual Server is a logical extension of this renowned performance and security. Even if there’s a storm or natural disaster, enterprises can remain operational thanks to 13 data centers available, as of 3Q2021, across four geographic regions — Americas (US, Canada, South America), EMEA, APAC and Japan — to help meet enterprises’ high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) needs. To say it’s the best of both worlds would be an understatement, and we are just getting started — there’s more to come.

IBM Power Systems Virtual Server in action

One of our long-standing clients, a leader in the food and beverage industry, knew to come to us when looking for digital transformation. We helped the client begin their journey to modernization while still providing the on-premises systems needed for operations. The client’s endgame was to reduce operational costs while increasing IT resiliency and optimization. We used the power of the Red Hat OpenShift platform and migrated one-third of the client’s enterprise workloads — including SAP ERP and SAP BW/4 HANA solutions — while helping lower their costs.

Our client was able to see first-hand why IBM Power Systems Virtual Server is a fully customizable environment that can handle SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW/4 HANA, Oracle, IBM Db2® solutions and thousands of other application requirements — even homegrown workloads.

You can click here to see more case studies and quotes from users.

The road ahead

For enterprises looking to extend their on-premises system to IBM Power Systems Virtual Server, the future is bright. Our team has several updates for IBM Power Systems Virtual Server planned in a variety of categories. We continue our expansion of the ISO27k standards to maximize privacy, with SOC 2 compliance coming soon. We’re providing automation, so your team doesn’t have to spend unnecessary resources and time migrating and expanding infrastructures to IBM Power Systems Virtual Server. We’re adding hybrid cloud credit management functionality to enable clients to easily use capacity credits on-prem and/or in IBM Power Systems Virtual Server data centers. We’re also enabling additional robust back-up and restore services. It comes together to create a seamless extension to your on-premises systems.

Getting started

Enterprise IT just got easier. Learn more about IBM Power Systems Virtual Server and speak to an expert today to see how it fits into your strategy. You can also call us at 1-866-872-3902 to learn more about the new IBM Power Systems Virtual Server offering.

[1] Based on the ITIC 2020 Global Server Hardware, Server OS Reliability Report.