Grow your business in a hybrid cloud environment

Deploy IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC

01

A cloud model for the new enterprise

4 min read

Deploy a secure, private space in a public cloud environment

Moving to the public cloud is no longer a question for enterprises. Remote work is something businesses are having to make accommodations for now more than ever before, and the solution must ensure sustained productivity of their workforce. As organizations continue to evaluate the best ways to equip their teams with scalable work environments, they’re looking for secure solutions to support this flexibility.

An essential component of these solutions is to use public clouds with hybrid deployments to ensure remote workers can access their work quickly and securely, so they remain productive and continue to contribute to business growth.

Virtual servers for VPC

Virtual servers for VPC (virtual private cloud) consist of virtual machines (VMs) within IBM’s VPC infrastructure, a public cloud construct. Virtual servers for VPC enable the deployment of a secured private space in a publicly accessible environment by way of a single-tenant infrastructure in a multitenant public cloud. VPCs are logically isolated networks where cloud compute, storage and networking resources are deployed and used to host business workloads, applications and websites. Like networks in traditional on-premises data centers, VPCs utilize cloud security functions and models that match the functionality of those found in offline data centers.

Extending the hybrid cloud model

Adding a cloud footprint with virtual servers for VPC simply extends capabilities to the cloud and creates a hybrid cloud model. There may be data that enterprises prefer not to move to the cloud like software and application assets that are patented, proprietary and constitute the foundation of their business and competitive advantage. If desired, those assets may remain on premises, but there are options in the cloud to ensure the highest level of security while allowing enterprises to protect their current investments.

The advantages of virtual servers for VPC

Agility
Dynamically deploy and scale cloud resources in real time wherever those resources are needed, using virtual networks and auto scale that adapt to the changing needs of the business.
Availability
Use redundant resources and highly fault-tolerant availability zone architectures to help ensure applications and workloads keep running in a highly available network with multizone regions (MZRs).
Security
Fully control how and by whom resources and workloads are accessed, using the VPC logically isolated networks. Security groups protect your workloads at the instance level, while access control lists (ACLs) protect resources at the subnet level.
Affordability
Take advantage of the public cloud’s cost-effectiveness, such as saving on hardware costs, labor times and other resources. Virtual servers for VPC offers a utility pricing model that charges only for consumed resources.

Virtual servers for VPC is like owning a condominium

An enterprise that chooses to move its mission-critical applications onto virtual servers for VPC is analogous to a homeowner purchasing a condominium in a large building with many units. The homeowner has their own keyed entry into their private living space where all their belongings are secured, yet the structure is designed to house other homeowners with their own private spaces, entry doors and sets of keys. Extending the analogy, the cloud service provider is like the owner of the condominium complex, who owns and manages the infrastructure—the foundation, walls, roof, plumbing and electrical—while the homeowners pay for their share of usage and enjoy the benefits of having their individual living spaces.

Virtual servers for VPC provides critical business value with cost savings

While protecting your critical data assets and preserving existing investments, virtual servers for VPC can also be automatically deployed in your environment, as the cloud delivers nearly instant compute, storage and networking resources with infrastructure as code. Gone are the long months of IT planning, budgeting, acquisition, deployment, management and operations, along with the need to plan for peak usage time and sink valuable financial resources into infrastructure that may never be utilized.

Benefits of implementing virtual servers for VPC

Flexible business growth
Cloud infrastructure resources are available as a pool of resources that are dynamically allocated to all applications. Virtual servers—or virtual server instances (VSIs)—and storage and networking make VPCs adaptable to changing business needs.
Reduced risk across the entire data lifecycle
Virtual servers for VPC are secured at the instance and subnet level. With your data secured, you gain peace of mind and inspire customer confidence.
More resources to channel toward business innovation
With costs reduced by paying only for what you use, and fewer demands on your internal IT team, you can focus on innovating and exercising core competencies to achieve key business goals.
Fully integrated with other IBM Services
Take advantage of IBM Services® offerings on the latest VPC infrastructure like IBM Cloud® Kubernetes Service on VPC and Red Hat® OpenShift® on IBM Cloud for VPC.
02

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC

6 min read

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC is available on IBM’s global networking cloud infrastructure

The IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC offering uses MZRs to support application and resource redundancy for high availability and scalability. It provides a purpose-built experience—user interface (UI), command-line interface (CLI) and application programming interface (API), allowing users to also take advantage of Terraform software for managing virtual server-based deployments on IBM Cloud.

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC supports cloud-native and hybrid cloud deployments.

Designed for easy setup of virtual servers for VPC

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC helps make setting up your cloud environment and adding required resources easier. There are three predefined virtual server profiles that group the right CPU power with the suitable storage and networking speeds in a single profile to help simplify operations.

Depending on your workloads, you may select:

  • Balanced profile for most applications with moderate traffic that require a balance of performance and scalability
  • Memory profile for applications that require large memory resources
  • Compute profile designed for applications that require intensive CPU resources

Physical and network isolation—keys to performance

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC are engineered for high performance and business continuity. They achieve high performance with logically isolated cloud resources by way of defined network segments and using OpenFastPath (OFP) routing rules. IBM Cloud has multizone regions that have 3 or more data centers within 6 miles of each other. By having these data centers in close proximity, it helps ensure high availability, resiliency and business continuity.

IBM Cloud extends to over 60 data centers in 6 regions and 18 availability zones across the globe.

IBM Cloud extends across 18 availability zones worldwide, with more availability regions launching in 2021. Cloud regions are geographically and physically separate groups of one or more availability zones—typically three. With independent power, cooling and high-speed network interconnections, availability zones are designed to strengthen fault tolerance by avoiding any single shared point of failure between zones. The architecture of availability zones also helps ensure high bandwidth and low interzone latency within a region. Deploying VSIs in multiple zones within a given VPC keeps application workloads highly available with added fault tolerance.

In the event of a rare disruption or scheduled downtime, mission-critical workloads deployed redundantly in availability zones can continue to operate and deliver the services that customers expect.

Diagram of the world map showing IBM data centers and global locations
Figure 1. IBM Cloud global data centers and multizone regions

Isolated—3-tier architecture

Within each availability zone, subnets can be defined so that they logically divide IP networks, allowing a client to place different compute, storage and networking resources required by applications and workloads. Access privileges to the deployed resources are governed by the routing rules set for each subnet. A 3-tier architecture that typically requires web servers, application servers and database servers in an on-premises environment can be constructed within VPCs, using subnets, security groups and ACLs.

Diagram of infrastructure architecture showing a 3-tier business application in a VPC
Figure 2. Deployment of a 3-tier business application in a VPC environment

Built-in security

The IBM Cloud VPC offering lets you define security groups for cloud resources (instances) and ACLs for subnets to manage access. ACLs regulate inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level, while security groups act like a virtual firewall at the instance level and control traffic to your virtual servers, based on rules that you establish.

IBM Cloud VPC also uses keep-your-own-key (KYOK) security through its cryptographic key management system and cloud hardware-security module (HSM) when using the IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services offering.

IBM’s keep-your-own-key security is built on FIPS 140-2 Level 4-certified hardware.

This service provides complete data authority to the key owner, enabling you to take sole control of your cloud data-encryption keys and cloud HSMs. Not even the cloud administrator can view or access your data.

IBM Differentiators

High-performance networking
The IBM Cloud VPC platform is ideal for network-intensive applications, simulations or in-memory caching with general-purpose profiles that provide close to 80 Gbps of network performance.
Fast provisioning
A hybrid environment with public cloud and VPC at its core can capitalize on changing marketplace conditions and better meet customer expectations. It enables the provisioning of compute resources in minutes by abstracting resources from physical servers in on-premises data centers to VMs in the cloud to improve system utilization and reduce infrastructure expenditures.
An interface designed for ease of use
Good Design Australia bestowed its 2019 annual award in the “Digital Design” category to the IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud infrastructure for achieving the IBM team’s goal of producing a cohesive and delightful user experience across the entire VPC suite of products.¹
Fully integrated with other IBM Services
Take advantage of IBM Services® offerings on the latest VPC infrastructure like IBM Cloud® Kubernetes Service on VPC and Red Hat® OpenShift® on IBM Cloud for VPC.
There is demonstration of good zoning and separation of technical specs, as well as characteristics of different instances. Furthermore, we saw good functional separation, allowing adaptive navigation based on which aspects of virtual servers are plugged in.¹

— Good Design Awards Jury

03

Most common use cases

4 min read

Accelerate innovation

Host and scale web applications in the cloud

Host web applications on IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC that rely on a global infrastructure distributed around the world—all connected—featuring multiple availability zones with no shared single point of failure. Handling unpredicted spikes in traffic can be achieved with the IBM Cloud Virtual Servers auto-scale capability, the IBM Cloud virtual private networking and load-balancing capabilities. The IBM Cloud Transit Gateway offering helps enable communications between resources located in separate VPCs.

Diagram of IBM Classic infrastructure compared to IBM VPC infrastructure and how they interact via a transit gateway
Figure 3. Hosting web applications with internet access and business applications on VPC

How your agents interact and resolve inquiries is a direct reflection on your business. The agent experience also directly impacts business outcomes. By focusing on what your contact center is hoping to achieve and aligning your contact center goals with your business strategy from the start, you can make sure your AI use cases will deliver measurable business results.

Extend capacity to the cloud

Seamlessly connect your on-premises environment to the IBM Cloud, with up to 10 Gbps port speed, and automate the creation of the hybrid environment, with infrastructure as code and auto-scaling rules. Stand up virtual servers and required storage and networking in minutes to extend your compute capacity when needed—with up to 5,000 nodes on demand.

Diagram of applications hosted on-premises and applications hosted in a VPC infrastructure
Figure 4. The IBM Cloud auto-scale capability adapts to your predefined rules

Develop and test in the cloud

Quickly build a development and testing (dev/test) environment on demand. DevOps teams can create automated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) flows that kick off the dev/test infrastructure that exists only if needed—so you pay only for what you use. Development, quality assurance (QA) and preproduction environments remain isolated, and integration with Terraform software enables infrastructure-as-code capabilities to be built into the workflows. IBM Cloud supports approximately 200 APIs, helping give development teams faster and easier access to cloud resources.

Infrastructure diagram showing cloud and on-premises applications using VPC and subnets
Figure 5. Sample dev/test environment using VPC and subnets
04

Extend your solution

1 min read

Designed for enterprise clients

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC helps make it easy for enterprises to deploy and manage applications in the IBM Cloud. Clients can define the network rules and fine-grained controls they need to regulate access to their cloud resources. VPC offers the advanced security of a private cloud and the agility and ease of public cloud, enabling clients to control secure VSIs with security groups and subnets with ACLs. IBM Cloud VPC utilizes security groups and ACL functions to help enable more secure environments for clients’ data and application workloads.

To help ensure enterprise workloads and cloud-native applications are continuously available, IBM Cloud has multizone regions comprised of up to 3 availability zones per MZR, with added fault tolerance when virtual servers and associated workloads are deployed in more than 1 availability zone for resilience and better business continuity.

We’re a trusted cloud provider

Digital data is the most valuable business asset of our time. Every action and interaction, every decision and relationship, every event occurring in any of the world’s complex systems, is now expressed as digital data. When you choose IBM as your cloud provider, you’re trusting us to honor the basic expectations that all individuals, enterprises and communities rightly have regarding data security and privacy. Read our position on data ownership and privacy, access, security and trust.