Product overview

IBM Fusion is a container-native hybrid cloud data platform that offers simplified deployment and data management for Kubernetes applications on Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform. IBM Fusion is designed to meet the storage requirements of modern, stateful Kubernetes applications and to make it easy to deploy and manage container-native applications and their data on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

It is an advanced storage and backup solution that is designed to simplify data accessibility and availability across hybrid clouds. Companies can expand data availability across complex hybrid clouds for greater business performance and resilience. With the IBM Fusion solutions, organizations manage only a single copy of data. They need not create duplicate data when moving application workloads across the enterprise, easing management functions when you streamline analytics and AI.

IBM Fusion provides a streamlined way for organizations to discover, secure, protect, and manage data from the edge, to the core data center, to the public cloud.

IBM Fusion is available as two deployments, namely IBM Fusion HCI and IBM Fusion.

IBM Fusion HCI
It is a purpose-built, hyper-converged architecture that is designed to deploy bare metal Red Hat OpenShift container management and deployment software alongside IBM Fusion software. For consistent and rapid deployment and management, it features an appliance form-factor, hyper-converged infrastructure along with integrated software-defined storage to meet the storage requirements of modern, stateful Kubernetes applications. Built with a storage platform that includes the essential elements necessary for mission-critical containers and hybrid cloud, the IBM Fusion provides a comprehensive infrastructure with compute, networking, and storage resources, including a data platform and global data services for Red Hat OpenShift.
The following Figure 1. High-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion HCI provides a high-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion HCI architecture:
  • The IBM Fusion HCI provides a fully integrated infrastructure, which combines compute, networking, and storage resources optimized for containerized workloads.
  • Designed to run on Bare Metal Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, it supports the building and running of cloud-native applications.
  • The Fusion Base offers essential services such as serviceability for issue diagnosis and resolution, a user interface for interaction with IBM Fusion HCI, and observability for monitoring system performance and health.
  • The Fusion infrastructure management layer, built on top of OpenShift, simplifies lifecycle management of compute nodes, networking, and storage, ensuring operational efficiency.
  • The Fusion services layer delivers a suite of solutions to secure and manage data across hybrid cloud environments.
Figure 1. High-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion HCI
high-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion HCI

To know more about IBM Fusion HCI, see IBM Fusion HCI documentation.

IBM Fusion
It is a software-defined storage management software with protection, backup, and caching elements and can be run on existing hardware resources.
The following Figure 2. High-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion provides a high-level conceptual architecture overview:
  • IBM Fusion is designed to run on OpenShift Container Platform across your infrastructure and various supported platforms, enabling the building and running of cloud-native applications.
  • Built atop OpenShift, Fusion Base provides foundational services such as serviceability for efficient issue diagnosis and resolution, a user interface for seamless interaction with IBM Fusion, and observability for system performance insights.
  • Layered above Fusion Base, Fusion services deliver a suite of solutions to secure and manage data across hybrid cloud environments.
Figure 2. High-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion
high-level conceptual overview of IBM Fusion