Item: IBM Cloud Bare Metal Server - VPC
Rating: 6
Author: Ralph Rebacz

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is used as a development environment. We are working on learning IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud Pak for Automation. The environment is intended to be used for customer demos with our products.

Pros and Cons

Creating Virtual Private Cloud and virtual server instances was quick and easy, saving us time.
Documentation for setting up networking was easy to follow.
IBM Cloud Command Line Interface allowed us to script repetitive tasks.

The documentation and integration between OpenShift and IBMCloud was not clear. It took some time to figure out which interface to use to setup certain items.
Better communication between departments could be improved. Had a billing question and had two departments saying it was the other team's issue. Took three days of back and forth to resolve.
The documentation for loading containers into IBM Cloud OpenShift container registry was not clear. The correct commands were not documented.

Return on Investment

Future readiness--we have the ability to quickly respond and build custom demos for customers in a short timeframe.
Savings on hardware--we have the ability to spin up large workloads to demonstrate to customers the performance of our tools and IBM Cloud.

Implementation Rating

Most of IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) was smooth in terms of implementation. Connecting to a Windows server running in IBM Cloud was one area that could have been simpler. The support team was responsive when we had questions. OpenShift, however, did not go as smoothly. The documentation between IBM Cloud, OpenShift and IBM Cloud Pak for Automation were inconsistent. It seemed like the documentation was disjointed and not updated for different versions.

IBM Cloud Portfolio

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers
IBM Cloud Container Registry
IBM Cloud Object Storage
IBM Cloud Managed Knative

Being able to leverage the other IBM Cloud offerings with VPC allowed us flexibility in building a robust migration application. In addition it is enabling us more options for add-on solutions for IBM Cloud Pak for Automation.

Alternatives Considered

Google App Engine

IBM's documentation and support for IBM Cloud for IBM Cloud Pak for Automation was stronger than with Google Cloud.

Likelihood to Recommend

We were planning on hosting an IBM Cloud Pak for Automation environment for a customer. IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) provides a quick way to deploy and upgrade a full IBM Cloud Pak for Automation.

Document migrations is another use case we have looked at using IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for. Being able to quickly spin up a temporary environment for migration and remove resources when completed allows us to reduce cost for the user.

Solid Development Environment

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)