Item: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We manage infrastructure for several clients, and the ones that use IBM Cloud use it exclusively and across the whole organization. We use IBM Cloud services to provide service for their web/mobile application's backend. This includes APIs, internal processes, networking, continuous integration, and continuous delivery workflows, testing, and several environments; among other things. We design, implement, and use these features, providing support for the full extent of their infrastructure.

Pros and Cons

$1000/month credit for IBM Cloud services.
Support for modern technologies.
Well performing hardware.

Very limited integration for non-IBM Cloud tooling.
Expensive price per hour.
Server provisioning times that make CI/CD unusable.

Return on Investment

The $1000/month credit is great for launching a startup.
Past the initial stages of the project, when the credit is not worth it, migrating to the competition seems like the obvious choice.
CI/CD tooling development takes 10 times more, on average than integrating with the competition.

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers Transient Pricing

I think Transient Pricing is a great feature that allows asynchronous non-priority tasks to be accomplished by a fraction of the price. It's always great to have the option to use this feature.

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers Reserved Servers

We haven't used this feature yet, but its purpose is clearly on the right path. My doubts reside in how good is the integration with custom tooling to be used in a programmatic manner.

Alternatives Considered

Amazon API Gateway, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Route 53, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon Simple Email Service, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Google Cloud CDN, Google Cloud DNS, Google Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud Datastore

If I had to list a personal "grand total", IBM Cloud would always come last due to the poor integration options and its tooling.

Other Software Used

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Route 53, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Likelihood to Recommend

I think IBM Cloud is well suited for processing tasks that receive few updates, or production servers that don't use a modern development system. On the other hand, any consumer application that follows current DevOps, continuous integration, or continuous delivery systems, is rendered unusable by the server provisioning time. These times being 150 more than the competition is unacceptable in my opinion.

Integration with external services and tooling would make it much better

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Virtual Servers