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You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers: IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers study jam!

  • 1.  You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers: IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers study jam!

    Posted Tue May 23, 2023 03:30 PM
    Edited by MERYL VERAMONTI Tue May 23, 2023 03:39 PM

    On May 17th, we discussed IBM Cloud's new bare metal servers fitted with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors along with the ins and outs of upgrading your servers for heavy workloads.  
    Thank you to all who joined our session! If you missed it, our resource recap is below.

    Download the slides here.
    You can watch the full On-Demand recording here.
    Post any questions for the presenters here.
    Get started with your IBMid here: https://ibm.co/2MNVTHb

    For reference, here are answers to your questions that you posed during Pain or Gain - Upgrading your bare metal infrastructure for the long-haul.

    Question

    Answer

    When will 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors be available for Kubernetes clusters?

    Great question. When it comes to virtual servers on IBM Cloud, 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors will only be heading into our newest infrastructure -- IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC. From there, our Kubernetes team will be cascading these new chipsets for cluster provisioning into the latter half of 2023.   

    Will there be an IBM Cloud Bare Metal Server (classic) offering featuring 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with a lower core count but higher clock speeds to support "core based" licensed workloads like SQL Server Enterprise?

    Yes. We're currently investigating the lower core counts + high clock speeds inside quad processors with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable technology -- and we look forward to releasing these towards the end of 2023. And good point, as these are not only great for MySQL databases due to their very fast response times, but also great for Oracle workloads, too.

    What does the roadmap look like for rolling out IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers (classic) with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to other IBM Cloud Data Centers?

    Currently, IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers (classic) with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors are available in our Dallas, TX data center. We'll be rolling out to our key multizone regions by end of 2023. Stay tuned for updates.

    Will you offer 4U chassis for 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors on bare metal?

    Yes, it's in our plans. Specifically, it's a dual socket, 36-bay mass storage server and we're excited to GA this beast (great for enterprise workloads due to its large onboard storage capacity) in the latter half of 2023.

    What are the exact models of 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors on bare metal that you offer in the catalog?

    Currently we offer the INTEL XEON 8474-C, which is a 48 core, 2.1 GHz server. Other processor configurations are under considerations into 2023.

    Will spot instance features be available in this offering?

    We do not offer spot instances (also known as transient pricing) for our bare meta servers on classic infrastructure. We do offer this feature on our IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC.

    Do you expect faster memory on this new platform?

    Absolutely. IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers (classic) with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors feature DDR5 | 4800 MHz. Compared to previous generations (DDR4), that's 1.6x the memory performance.  

    Will these processors/servers be available in Paris and Amsterdam?

    Yes. We're currently preparing Amsterdam and Paris for go-live in the second half of 2023.

    What manufacturer(s) are these from?

    Right now, we've worked with Lenovo on the manufacturing of this offering, and we're evaluating other vendors to offer a wider variety.

    Which operating systems can I provision on this new offering?

    You have your choice of RHEL 8.6, no OS, Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 11, Rocky Linux 8, and Windows 2019/2022. VMware will soon follow.

    What are the billing options?

    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers (classic) with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors are available in monthly billing cycles, and 1 and 3-year contract billing cycles.

     

    Download the slides here.
    You can watch the full On-Demand recording here.
    Post any questions for the presenters here.
    Get started with your IBMid here: https://ibm.co/2MNVTHb

     



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    MERYL VERAMONTI
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