Frequently asked questions

This solution provides single-tenant infrastructure with higher levels of isolation for enhanced security and compliance readiness. IBM Cloud VMware Solutions Dedicated is for organizations looking to retain control of managing updates and patching since you'll have full control of the hypervisor.

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Dedicated is available in North America West (San Jose); North America South (Dallas and Queretaro); North America East (Montreal, Toronto and Washington DC); South America (Sao Paulo); Europe (Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Milan, Oslo and Paris); and Asia Pacific (Chennai, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo).

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared is available in North America South (Dallas) with plans to be available in Europe in 2H 2020.

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Dedicated is HIPAA-ready, GDPR-ready, and Privacy-Shield-Certified. IC4V Dedicated has also been independently verified and complies with SOC1 Type 2, SOC2 Type 2, SOC3 as well as ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018.

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared is GDPR-ready and Privacy-Shield-Certified. IC4V Shared has also been independently verified and complies with ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018.

For more information regarding the IBM Cloud compliance program, please visit this webpage. 

IBM Cloud is the most secure, enterprise-grade cloud at global scale for VMware workloads. 

• Get the same level of visibility, control and operational consistency as on premises with hypervisor root level access.

• Provide right-size infrastructure and performance with 100+ bare metal configs for VMware while reducing TCO with no-cost data transfer within private network.

• Achieve 99.99% uptime at the VM level with high-availability architecture, and only cloud with SAP-certified servers for VMware workloads.

• Modernize VMware workloads with Red Hat® OpenShift® and PaaS across virtual machines (VMs) and containers.

• Operate with the highest level key management encryption with FIPS 140-2 Level 4 and “keep your own keys” (KYOK).

• Run with one of the world’s largest operators of VMware workloads with 15 years of experience and expertise with VMware technologies.

Each of the IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions is available with an array of deployment options, as well as self-managed or managed options. Infrastructure, software and support for these bundles are all included in the monthly subscription price. No contracts are necessary, and you can scale up or down at any time.

In the self-managed option, you can rent VMware licenses on a monthly subscription basis or bring your own licenses from an existing ELA. Licenses rented from IBM Cloud are offered on a monthly subscription and metered per physical CPU for extremely advantageous pricing.

In the managed option, VMware licenses are baked into the price of the solution. The solution runs on multi-tenant infrastructure and can be consumed in a highly scalable hourly model.

IC4V Shared is offered in two consumption models: On-Demand and Reserved. With "On- Demand," compute resources are made available to users on an as-needed basis and billed hourly. This model is a best fit for VMs that are consumed for a short period of time or for fluctuating capacity needs like cloud bursting and non-critical DR workloads.

With "Reserved," clients can reserve their compute capacity needs with an up-front reservation in a monthly billing model, guaranteeing the availability of resources. Other than compute, all resources such as storage and egress are charged as per actual usage for both "On-Demand" and "Reserved" consumption models.

No, IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions provides full native access to the VMware stack. Clients can move workloads to and from the cloud without changing apps, tooling, scripts — or investing in new resources or skills.

IBM Cloud provides flexible pricing compared to other cloud providers. For example, IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions offers monthly pricing with no commitments, whereas VMC on AWS offers on-demand hourly, 1-year and 3-year commitment pricing. Plus, data transfer within IBM Cloud is free.

Additionally, IBM Cloud offers dedicated or multi-tenant infrastructure for VMware workloads, providing clients the flexibility to cost-efficiently run all types of workloads from dev and test to mission-critical in an appropriate environment.

It’s great to know that you are using public cloud resources. IBM Cloud has a number of key differentiators that set it apart from other clouds. Examples:

• Provides highest data security certification in the industry with KYOK
• Offers no-cost data movement across data centers over the IBM private network
• Delivers stronger data security, which splits network traffic into three streams (private, public and management)   
• Unlike some of our competitors, IBM doesn't use customers' data to train our AI model
• Award-winning unified cloud user interface

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions was jointly engineered with VMware and was the first cloud solution built for VMware workloads. You can still go to your VMware sales representative today to ask about IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.

Yes. You can work with the IBM Cloud Professional Services team to design, accelerate and implement VMware solutions on bare metal servers. Whether you need help with implementation, workload migration or a fully managed environment, the IBM Cloud Professional Services team can help meet your needs. IBM Cloud becomes an extension of your existing data centers.