AWS CloudFormation vs IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

Likelihood to Recommend

No answers on this topic

If you're already a customer of IBM, or using an IBM product through an ASP or reseller, or you need access to the hundreds of services IBM provides, it's a great place to build out your infrastructure.

If you're an established company slowly adding VMs, a smaller provider in the vast digital ocean of choices may be better.

Read full review

Scott Galvin

Co-founder

CenturyLinkFinancial Services, 1-10 employees

View all 51 answers on this topic

Feature Rating Comparison

AWS CloudFormation

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime

Dynamic scaling

Elastic load balancing

Pre-configured templates

Monitoring tools

Pre-defined machine images

Operating system support

Security controls

Pros

No answers on this topic

The pricing options for services is awesome, offering bare-metal and other high-demand services at hourly rates.
Softlayer offers a huge assortment of high-powered services, such as Nvidia Tesla GPU computing, high-bandwidth connection options, and highly customizable bare-metal servers
All of Softlayers' plans and services are fully adaptable to to fit your needs, with a huge amount of options for both the services they offer and the management options available for those services.

Read full review

Craig Nash

Sr. Network Engineer

GodAmongGeeks.ComInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

View all 51 answers on this topic

Cons

No answers on this topic

The IBM Cloud Web UI is very slow and not responsive
It would be nice to provide a direct way to choose a template image when creating a VSI
It would be nice if transient VSIs can be resized (CPU and Mem)

Read full review

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Research Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 51 answers on this topic

Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers 8.2

Based on 1 answer

It's hard to imagine not renewing having spent so much time setting up our infrastructure to utilise the CVS

Read full review

Verified User

Strategist in Finance and Accounting

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Support Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers 7.5

Based on 2 answers

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.

Read full review

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Utilities Company, 11-50 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

No answers on this topic

I have had a dedicated server for 20 years. The last company, Softlayer, got bought out by IBM, and the transition has been a very good one. When I started using IBM for all my hosting solutions, I became a really big fan. Everything has been a user-friendly experience. The products have been really easy to work with.

Read full review

Jeffrey Lange

Owner / Creative Director / Developer / Digital Marketing

FanbuildInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees

View all 51 answers on this topic

Return on Investment

No answers on this topic

Freed up our team to focus on working on our own products and not having to worry about maintaining and patching servers.
On-demand procurement allowed our team to quickly spin up servers as needed and shut them down when work is done.

Read full review

Qing Miao

Program Manager

AppFusionsComputer Software, 1-10 employees

View all 51 answers on this topic

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

AWS CloudFormation Editions & Modules

Edition

Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account	$0.00
Handler Operation	$0.0009²

per handler operation

Additional Pricing Details

There is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers Editions & Modules

Edition

IBM Cloud Public Virtual Servers	starting at $0.038¹
IBM Cloud Dedicated Virtual Servers	starting at $0.22¹
IBM Cloud Public Virtual Servers	starting at $25.21²
IBM Cloud Dedicated Virtual Servers	starting at $149.00²
IBM Cloud Transient Virtual Servers	starting at $0.01³
IBM Cloud Reserved Virtual Servers	starting at $0.02³
IBM Cloud Reserved Virtual Servers	starting at $13.27⁴

per hour
per month
per hour
per month

Additional Pricing Details

IBM Cloud virtual servers include 250 GB of outbound public bandwidth, unmetered inbound public bandwidth, and unmetered private and management network bandwidth.

Rating Summary

AWS CloudFormation

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

AWS CloudFormation

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

AWS CloudFormation

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers