Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) vs. IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC

Amazon S3 is a great service to safely backup your data where redundancy is guaranteed and the cost is fair. We use Amazon S3 for data that we backup and hope we never need to access but in the case of a catastrophic or even small slip of the finger with the delete command we know our data and our client's data is safely backed up by Amazon S3. Transferring data into Amazon S3 is free but transferring data out has an associated, albeit low, cost per GB. This needs to be kept in mind if you plan on transferring out a lot of data frequently. There may be other cost effective options although Amazon S3 prices are really low per GB. Transferring 150TB would cost approximately $50 per month.

Incentivized

One scenario that immediately came to my mind was large-scale data processing, IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is well-suited for organizations that require high-performance computing capabilities, particularly when processing large amounts of data. It can also be useful for companies or organizations that wish to migrate their workplace to the cloud and it may suite companies that have strict compliance requirements since the servers have robust security features.

Incentivized

• Fantastic developer API, including AWS command line and library utilities.
• Strong integration with the AWS ecosystem, especially with regards to access permissions.
• It's astoundingly stable- you can trust it'll stay online and available for anywhere in the world.
• Its static website hosting feature is a hidden gem-- it provides perhaps the cheapest, most stable, most high-performing static web hosting available in PaaS.

Incentivized

• Scalability: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers enable businesses to simply and quickly scale up or down the resources they require in response to changing business demands. This enables firms to respond to traffic spikes, requests for new services, or changes in business size without the need for additional hardware purchases or maintenance.
• Cost savings: By employing virtual servers in the cloud, enterprises can decrease capital expenditures for hardware and infrastructure while also lowering ongoing operational expenses by removing server maintenance and management costs. This can result in significant cost savings for enterprises, particularly those that need to raise or decrease their computer capacity fast and easily.
• High availability: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is built with high availability in mind, giving enterprises the certainty that their applications and data will be available and accessible even if hardware fails or other disruptions occur. This assists enterprises in maintaining business continuity and lowering the chance of downtime, which is crucial for firms that rely on 24/7 access to their systems. Furthermore, IBM's comprehensive network and security features aid in the prevention of data breaches and other security risks, assuring the availability and reliability of their applications and data.

Incentivized

• Web console can be very confusing and challenging to use, especially for new users
• Bucket policies are very flexible, but the composability of the security rules can be very confusing to get right, often leading to security rules in use on buckets other than what you believe they are

Incentivized

• It would also be nice if there were more templates to choose from when creating a server. Right now there are only a few options, and we'd like to see more variety.
• We'd like to see the ability to create server groups. This would make it easier to manage a large number of servers since we could do all of the updates and management tasks for them at once.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to automatically install updates on all of the virtual servers. We have to go in and manually update each one, which can be time-consuming. It would be really nice if automatic updates can be done.

Incentivized

It has a flexible and affordable pricing, easy to configure and manage. It is easy to spawn one or multiple instances and have them up and running in no time

Incentivized

It is tricky to get it all set up correctly with policies and getting the IAM settings right. There is also a lot of lifecycle config you can do in terms of moving data to cold/glacier storage. It is also not to be confused with being a OneDrive or SharePoint replacement, they each have their own place in our environment, and S3 is used more by the IT team and accessed by our PHP applications. It is not necessarily used by an average everyday user for storing their pictures or documents, etc.

Incentivized

Always available when you need an instance.

Incentivized

Most of the instances work on hypervisors with good processors, but not all of them.

Incentivized

AWS has always been quick to resolve any support ticket raised. S3 is no exception. We have only ever used it once to get a clarification regarding the costs involved when data is transferred between S3 and other AWS services or the public internet. We got a response from AWS support team within a day.

Incentivized

It is adequate, but you need to be ready to argue your point - which is fair enough, I suppose, but being given the opposite of the benefit of the doubt every time does not necessarily result in an enjoyable user experience.

Incentivized

We did not use IBM professional services to implement IBM Cloud Virtual Servers.

Incentivized

Overall, we found that Amazon S3 provided a lot of backend features Google Cloud Storage (GCS) simply couldn't compare to. GCS was way more expensive and really did not live up to it. In terms of setup, Google Cloud Storage may have Amazon S3 beat, however, as it is more of a pseudo advanced version of Google Drive, that was not a hard feat for it to achieve. Overall, evaluating GCS, in comparison to S3, was an utter disappointment.

Incentivized

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers offer more customization options than Amazon EC2, with the ability to select from a range of operating systems, storage types, and network configurations. IBM also provides a wide range of tools and services to help manage and optimize your virtual servers, including a web-based console, CLI, and API.

AWS EC2 is a more managed platform, with a focus on providing a simple and easy-to-use interface. Amazon provides a range of predefined instance types, each with different specs and pricing, to make it easy to find the right option for your needs. AWS also offers a number of management and monitoring tools, but these are often more basic than what is available from IBM.

Incentivized

It worked well for us in the beginning, it works well for us when we have more instances.

Incentivized

• It practically eliminated some real heavy storage servers from our premises and reduced maintenance cost.
• The excellent durability and reliability make sure the return of money you invested in.
• If the objects which are not active or stale, one needs to remove them. Those objects keep adding cost to each billing cycle. If you are handling a really big infrastructure, sometimes this creates quite a huge bill for preserving un-necessary objects/documents.

Incentivized

• Supports businesses who want compute power on demand (instances are ready within minutes).
• It can give you access to a 32-core CPU at $0.29 for short running or interruptible processes - enabling cost-efficient number crunching.
• Given me a taste of the powers of remote compute power for compilation and development.

Incentivized