Great product that could use some simpler VS setups
Updated April 20, 2020

Great product that could use some simpler VS setups

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

It is mainly being used in data science and actuarial departments for heavyweight modelling where either high memory or large CPU requirements (or both) are required. Also as we explore further the use of machine learning and AI, the possibility to access very large GPU machines is appealing as this dramatically increases efficiency in a cost effective way.

Pros

  • A broad range of setup options, so we can choose the right GPU/CPU/RAM for the run at hand, which makes things more cost-effective.
  • Data security is important to us, being able to choose a server location helps with giving assurance that the data will be looked after appropriately.
  • The cloud site is extremely well set out, it is very easy to quickly spec out and cost a VM.

Cons

  • When launching a VSI it's not always obvious how far progressed or how long we will have to wait.
  • It's also not 100% clear when billing starts and stops.
  • It would be great to have a few "works out of the box" configurations, with sensible defaults so that inexperienced users can quickly launch a windows instance to run a heavy model without having to worry about getting config exactly right. "too many options".
  • With access to large machines, we've been able to increase our modelling ambitions to include more complex assessment of the risk in the business.
  • The ability to access large GPUs has singificantly cut the time it has taken us to train very complex AI systems
IBM, AWS and Google Cloud are all market leaders for a reason and in many ways there isn't much to choose - aside from personal preference of purchasing managers. In our case it was familiarity and confidence from having used IBM CVS on previous projects, the security/data considerations and wide ranges of configurations that swung the decision.
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers are well suited if you know what you're doing or have used a cloud service before. It is not well suited if you are new to doing this or don't have a coach nearby.

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC Feature Ratings

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
8.8
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
10
Dynamic scaling
9
Elastic load balancing
9
Pre-configured templates
6
Monitoring tools
8
Pre-defined machine images
8
Operating system support
10
Security controls
10

IBM Cloud Support and Implementation

The combination of the excellent documentation and knowing that we have access to a first-rate, responsive support team...

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers Pricing, Time savings and Efficiency

Using IBM Cloud Virtual Servers

Actuarial modelling and calibration
Data science
Investment/asset management
3 - The internal support are basically passionate users, with massive hearts who willingly add to their busy workload by supporting others!
  • Rapid scale up of processing resources to meet regulatory reporting requirements
  • Very large RAM machines for large in-memory calculations (for example nested stochastic simulations)
  • Large GPU machines for rapid training of complex ML/AI models
  • A convincing Chatbot!!
It's hard to imagine not renewing having spent so much time setting up our infrastructure to utilise the CVS

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