IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC

Formerly IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers are being used as a pilot project to extend our data center used by researchers. In other words, extra jobs that cannot be fulfilled by our data center will be offloaded to IBM VSI. Currently it is being used by one department but it will be used by the entire university once the solution is stable and goes into production.

We are only using transient VSI to reduce the cost. While IBM can reclaim the instance at any time, this almost never happens to us. A transient VSI would run for couple of weeks with no problems. It is also way cheaper compared to the on-demand instances. The only issue with IBM transient VSIs is that they are not resizable (CPU, Mem).

We didn't use reserved capacity as our main focus was allocating instances on the fly. While reserved instances can be low cost, transient instances have even lower costs and that is what we are using to expand the capacity of our data center on-demand while keeping the cost as low as possible.

We did not use dedicated instances.

It was very straight forward and the implementation went smoothly.

There was once instance when all traffic to one virtual server was blocked. The firewall configuration was not well set and the support team troubleshooted the problem with us and walked us through the steps to fix the issue.

We use the transient instances to expand our data center on-demand and that cut in the average cost definitely helped us reduce our running costs and increase our capacity in terms of running more instances.

Since we run transient instances on demand, the hourly rate is very beneficial to us as the instances get created and destroyed based on the available jobs. Thus, a monthly rate does not work for our model and only an hourly rate such as the one provided can work for our use case.

NA

NA

We use IBM Cloud Virtual Servers to host different web-based systems. It is used across the whole organization and we deploy solutions for customers/third parties on it. We mostly use virtual servers and also utilize some of the IBM Watson services.

Transient pricing allows us to use the capacity we need when we need it, without commitment in the future.

We have not used instance reservations.

We have not used dedicated hosts.

It went as expected without any unforeseen issues.

Cannot provide particular example, but is often that the support agent would put extra effort to really dog into your problem and point you to the right docs or solve the issue for you directly.

We did indeed reduce cloud costs for all our deployments/project by about 15% which we were able to reallocate for further product improvements.

We have some automated test pipelines that do E2E integration test, including infrastructure provisioning. Hourly billing is a great fit that optimizes costs for this type of usages.

N/A

N/A

Would not really change, IBM works good for us.

Yes, very easy, no training required.

Nothing special or IBM specific.

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers are being used by me as a freelance developer hosting personal projects as well as clients. It solves my hosting situation. When you are a developer, like myself, it's easy to create a hosting environment and have it ready to deploy when needed.

Before I was spending a lot more with hosting on dedicated servers before switching to virtual servers. I love the pricing. It's really easy to budget for my hosting needs. I love having hourly and monthly usage and options. The hourly is great for deploying projects in development modes that do not need to be billed monthly. This is how I was able to cut down my server costs. I can create server images, deploy them quickly, get billed hourly, and end at any time while having my main server billed monthly.

I think it's great to be able to select the location of the server or multiple servers since some projects might be focused on a particular region.

ROI is an extremely important factor with cloud computing. It's important to identify the right service for your products. Being able to add or remove services based on the server's needs makes it more cost efficient for any organization. Since I do pay-as-you-go services it's very beneficial to adjust these services environment according to the peak usage. For example, I reduce the environment during off season to increase my ROI and increase the resources when needed.

As mentioned in my earlier comment, it's important to use the hourly flexibility to your advantage. Use resources when they are needed and reduce them when they are not. If you run a business that is more used during the winter time, you can reduce your server resources to save money throughout the year. Increasing your resources during peak and prime seasons would be beneficial. This wouldn't be very efficient to adjust every day, it would be more recommended in the long term approach spread out throughout the year based on off seasons. An example would be a landscaping business that has a long stretch of off season through the fall and winter. You could reduce your resources throughout fall and winter to save your annual server fees.

This question showed up completely blank and I'm not sure what to write for this? Please update the question and I can update my answer. Please see attached link for reference.

This is another blank question and I'm not sure what to write for this? If you want to update the question I can update my answer? Please see the attached link for reference that the question is completely blank.