In association with IBM
The cloud value propositions of flexibility and scalability were ideally suited for the initial use cases that deployed on cloud Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), such as start-up and hobbyist/shadow-IT workloads. While these continue to be important, enterprise use cases require more from their IT stack. These include end-to-end security, flexibility to operate across multiple premises and platforms, and partners to support the enterprise’s vertical-specific needs.
IBM Cloud offers an expansive global cloud infrastructure service inclusive of open hybrid and multi-cloud enablers and the broad IBM ecosystem of technology and service partners designed to address these needs.
In 2016, VMware and IBM entered a strategic partnership to provide clients with access to a turnkey, native VMware environment in IBM Cloud’s global data centres. VMware customers can ‘lift and shift’- and ultimately, transform – their environments on-premises onto the IBM Cloud without needing to refactor their applications and workloads.
IBM have created several unique solutions for VMware workloads, including:
Hypervisor and full administrator access
VMware Solutions on IBM Cloud provide customers with full bare metal and hypervisor access and full administrative access to vCenter, PSC, NSX, and any add-on service. Customers deploying their VMware environment in IBM Cloud possess the same control, security, and functionality as they do with their on-premises environment. IBM provides a completely native VMware environment, requiring no changes to existing tooling or processes. The only difference is that it is consumed in a cloud model.
Multiple SDDC configurations and hardware options
IBM understands that customers have different requirements, so flexibility is embedded into its solutions. Customers have the choice of two automated software-defined data centre (SDDC) configurations -VMware vCenter Server (VCS) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)- which are automatically provisioned at data centres around the globe in just hours. IBM offers six different compute options, nine RAM options, and two storage types (vSAN and NFS), providing over 200 different choices, meaning customers can tailor the environment to their workloads within VCS and VCF.
Multiple storage options
Some workloads run better on different storage types, so IBM provides robustness and choice to ensure it deploys the optimised storage for the customers’ workloads and applications. Customers can choose vSAN All-Flash, Endurance File Storage, and NetApp ONTAP Select. Customers can now also use IBM Cloud Object Storage.
Security and compliance
Recognising that security is one of the biggest causes for hesitation in cloud adoption, IBM designed the VCS and VCF solutions to alleviate these concerns. The VCS and VCF are hosted on single, dedicated environments, which eliminates the ‘noisy neighbour’ effect and data corruption from other tenants. IBM’s VMware hardware attestation to the chipset ensures workloads run on trusted servers with role-based access, as well as Intel TXT that provides encryption at the chip-level. VCS and VCF also integrate industry-leading security solutions, such as Intel/HyTrust, F5, and Fortinet. HyTrust provides data sovereignty and encryption, F5 enables gateway load balancing and uniform security policies, and Fortinet allows consistent security policies between on-premise and IBM Cloud. With access to the hypervisor and bare metal, clients can ensure the technical, business, and personnel controls in place help meet compliance and auditing requirements.
Business continuity and high availability
Customers expect uptime 24/7/365. With the growing threats of cyber-attacks and natural disasters, maintaining uptime has become essential. IBM recognises that having a resiliency strategy is now a necessity. VMware Solutions on IBM Cloud has three resiliency tools – Zerto (disaster recovery), Veeam (disaster recovery and backup), and IBM Spectrum Protect Plus (backup) – that enable customers to reduce downtime. These offerings are hypervisor-based and give customers access to the native advanced features and functionalities of these solutions.
DNA IT provides managed services for backup and DR in the IBM Cloud using these services, customers get a fully independent service that forms part of your business continuity plan. With the recent announcement of VMware for Mission Critical Workloads, IBM and DNA IT can now provide customers with high availability within a data centre region with an SLA of 99.99% uptime.
Network backbone and geographic reach
VMware Solutions for IBM Cloud is available more than 50 data centres worldwide. Once a customer has deployed an environment in the IBM Cloud, they can secure it through IBM’s private network backbone and replicate and migrate their workloads to other IBM Cloud data centres for free. IBM’s unmetered private worldwide network backbone enables unmatched connectivity as users can easily migrate workloads between deployed environments. For example, if you have a production environment and a backup environment in another data centre, the daily or weekly rate of change would be completely free, saving you a significant cost.
Migration made easy
IBM combined the VMware vCenter Server (VCS) and VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) in VMware vCenter Server with Hybridity Bundle, allowing customers to get the flexibility of VCS and the migration capabilities of HCX. HCX allows customers to create an abstraction layer that will enable them to migrate and modernise their on-premises environment to the cloud without changing IP or MAC addresses. IBM has other migration tools, such as Zerto and NSX, which allow the customers to choose a migration solution that fits their workload best. If you need assistance with migration, DNA IT and the IBM Migration Factory offers a service where it works onsite to design, plan, and migrate your environment into the cloud.
VMware expertise
IBM and VMware have been partners for a long time, and throughout the years, IBM has cultivated extensive expertise on VMware. IBM has over 1,000 VMware Certified professionals and business partners, including DNA IT in Ireland, who can provide managed services for a VMware solution in the IBM Cloud if a customer prefers to have their VMware environment managed. IBM Cloud was first to market, delivering a VMware Cloud Foundation in the cloud. IBM Cloud was awarded the VMware 2017 Partner of the Year Award.
Modernise apps to accelerate innovation
Many organisations looking to use the cloud can now ‘lift and transform’ their heritage applications and accelerate innovation by migrating those applications to the cloud and extending them into new public cloud services. Leveraging IBM Cloud Private and IBM Services to re-architect or partially refactor heritage applications, customers can containerise stateless apps with microservices and keep stateful portions of their workloads in VMware. Through the modernisation and transformation process, customers get a path to cloud-native applications with DevOps, microservices, containers, and much more.
Leverage and optimise investment
Many enterprises use IBM Middleware products, such as WebSphere and API Connect, that could have Mission Critical System of Record on multiple on-premises platforms. Customers can move those records into the IBM Cloud, providing new levels of insight and innovation, by leveraging IBM’s vast Platform as a Service (PaaS) array, such as Watson AI, IoT, analytics, WebSphere as a Service, and many more. VMware Solutions on IBM Cloud provides an extension of the customers’ on-premise VMware workloads in a flexible and scalable cloud model.
DNA IT is hosting a webinar with expert speakers from IBM and VMware at 11am 4 March to discuss the issues facing customers when considering the future of their VMware estates. The benefits of migrating to the IBM Cloud will be demonstrated along with the potential pitfalls and considerations all customers must consider, regardless of what cloud platform they are considering.
To register for the event, visit attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/
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