VMware vSphere gives you maximum flexibility to build your own IBM-hosted environment using VMware-compatible hardware and the right set of VMware components that fit your business needs and expertise.
You can design your hosted VMware environment any way you want: from a single ESXi cluster to a robust software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture. The VMware vSphere offering helps you extend your on-premises VMware environment into IBM Cloud.
VMware vSphere lets you start as small as a single ESXi server and scale the cluster by rapidly provisioning ESXi on single-tenant bare metal servers. Expand your on-premises data center capacity without sacrificing the enhanced security of dedicated infrastructure. VMware vSphere also offers the latest native VMware encryption options at the VM-level or at the vSAN datastore-level.
Access the IBM-hosted VMware environment with the same level of control and visibility that you have on-premises. With full administration permissions to the VMware stack, you have total control and can continue leveraging your investment in tools, scripts, and training to manage the off-premises environment.
Platform instances and expansion nodes are priced per month and include access to IBM Support and all VMware product licenses that comprise the service.
VMware components
Select licenses (IBM-provided or BYOL) for the following VMware components:
- VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus 7.0u2 or 6.7u3
- The following VMware components are optional:
- VMware vCenter Server® Standard
- VMware NSX® (Data Center SP Base, Data Center SP Professional, Data Center SP Advanced, or Data Center SP Enterprise Plus)
- VMware vSAN (Advanced or Enterprise)
- VMware Site Recovery Manager
- VMware vRealize® Automation Enterprise
- VMware vRealize Operations™ Enterprise
- VMware vRealize Log Insight™
If IBM provided the license, IBM will act as the single contact point for supporting the total cloud environment you own, including the VMware infrastructure and the provisioned software.
Bare metal server
You can order one or more IBM Cloud bare metal servers with one of the following configurations:
- Cascade Lake – 2-CPU Intel® Cascade Lake generation servers (Intel Xeon® 4200/5200/6200/8200 series) and 4-CPU Intel Cascade Lake generation servers (Quad Intel Xeon Gold 6248 and Quad Intel Xeon Platinum 8260). Each with your selected CPU model and RAM size.
- Skylake – 2-CPU Intel Skylake generation servers (Intel Xeon 4100/5100/6100 series) with your selected CPU model and RAM size.
- SAP-certified – 2-CPU Intel Skylake generation servers Intel Cascade Lake generation servers (Intel Xeon Gold 5200/6200 series and Intel Xeon Platinum 8200 series) with your selected CPU model.
