Who doesn't want more Power in their cloud?

Today IBM announced a series of updates for its Power Virtual Server offering running on IBM Cloud. The new advancements to the onboarding and user experience of Power Virtual Server focus on enhancing usability, reducing costs and minimizing risk for clients. This includes new backup-as-a-service, disaster recovery automation, improved cloud security and compliance, simplified migration and simplified networking.

IBM Power isn't some fancy marketing name, Power is a server architecture powered (pun intended) by the IBM Power processor, which provides a different level of performance and security than an x86 based processor.

“Power Virtual Server has the same Power architecture that we have on premises,” Doris Conti, VP of aaS product management for IBM Power, told SDxCentral. “Typically, our focus is existing IBM Power clients looking for an opex, managed cloud solution for their workload.”

Power in the cloud is a growing effort

Conti noted that IBM first introduced Power Virtual Server in 2019, and now has 21 data centers worldwide that provide that offering.

There are typically several different common use cases. One is organizations running production-critical IBM AIX or IBM i workloads; another is to use Power Virtual Server for application development and testing of AIX or IBM i workloads. (AIX is IBM’s Unix operating system (OS) while the IBM i is an OS that has its origins in the IBM AS/400 platform.)

“Clients can migrate any workload to either AIX, IBM i or Linux on Power,” Conti said.

The use of the offering for backup of on-premises Power workloads to the cloud is another common deployment, as is using it for deploying SAP on Power Linux.

Backup and disaster recovery for Power Virtual Server

Among the updates that IBM is providing for Power Virtual Server in IBM Cloud are improved disaster recovery capabilities.

“We are in the progress of updating all our data centers with Global Replication Services, to provide asynchronous data replication between two paired Power Virtual Server sites over long distances,” Conti said. “We have a tech preview available now and will GA capabilities to allow clients to easily set up and manage disaster recovery of workloads they migrate to Power Virtual Servers. ”

IBM is also improving backup-as-a-service, working together with IBM partner Cobalt Iron to provide to AIX and Linux clients on Power Virtual Server a fully managed automated backup service.

“Clients can sign up for this service and feel confident that their data is backed up,” she said. “Previously clients would have had to set up, admin and manage their backups.”

Power Edge Router comes to the cloud

Network routing capabilities for IBM Power Virtual Server are also getting a boost, with the integration of the Power Edge Router (PER).

PER is a high-performance router engineered to facilitate easier access for a Power Systems Virtual Server instance to other IBM Cloud services. Conti said that PER was not previously part of IBM Power Virtual Server. IBM is starting to roll out PER to all of its data centers and expects to complete it in the second quarter of 2024.

“Previously, clients were required to order, configure and manage direct links to establish site-to-site network connectivity,” she said. “Now with PER and our new VPNaaS, clients can set up a site-to-site network in hours vs. days or weeks.”