IBM has decided to consolidate its Power Systems offerings in the IBM Cloud.
As a result, we are redirecting efforts for IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC on POWER to the existing IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers offering, which has seen significant demand since being released to market in June 2019. IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers offers AIX, IBM i operating systems, and BYOL model for both Red Hat and SUSE Linux. Power Virtual Servers can connect to IBM Cloud resources via the Direct Link service.
IBM Power Systems AC922, which powers the two fastest supercomputers today, will continue to be available for on-premises deployment in client data centers. They are also available for rent in the cloud from IBM Business Partners, including Cirrascale and Nimbix.
Clients looking to take advantage of GPU processing in the IBM Cloud can continue to select from several performance-level GPU card options on our x86-based processor bare metal and virtual servers, including the following:
- NVIDIA Tesla M60: Fundamental enterprise performance for virtualization and professional graphics.
- NVIDIA Tesla K80: Reliable enterprise performance for introductory AI computing.
- NVIDIA Tesla P100: Essential performance for growing advanced AI and HPC capabilities.
- NVIDIA Tesla V100 (16GB and 32GB): Maximum performance for progressive deep learning workloads.
- NVIDIA Tesla T4 (Coming soon): Precision-tuned performance for advanced AI inference, VDI desktops and workstations, and graphics enhanced by RTX Cores.
The popular IBM AI software solutions—such as Visual Insights, Watson Machine Learning-Accelerator, Watson Machine Learning-Community Edition, and H2O Driverless AI—can all run on both Power and x86 based infrastructures.
Important dates to know
End of Marketing (EOM) Date: June 2, 2020
- New instances of VPC on POWER will no longer be able to be provisioned.
- Existing VPC on POWER clients who have instances provisioned as of the EOM date will continue to be able to work with those virtual servers and provision new virtual servers until the EOS date.
- For a period of 90 days after the End of Marketing Date, all existing instances will continue to be available on the Services dashboard in the IBM Cloud console.
End of Support (EOS) Date: August 22, 2020
- Any instance still provisioned as of the End of Support Date will be deleted. Please extract data that is still desired as soon as possible.