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The Latest with IBM i in the Cloud

By Brandon Pederson posted Fri December 04, 2020 04:26 PM

  

2020 certainly hasn’t turned out the way we thought it would when we published our first iSight blog post back in January. A lot has changed along the way, requiring our clients and business partners to be flexible and make rapid changes to their business and IT environments. Many have looked to hybrid cloud for their IBM i workloads to gain competitive advantages and increase agility in a challenging year. Because of this, I wanted to provide the community with a quick update on the latest with IBM i in the cloud and how you can take advantage for your business as well: 

Lower Hybrid Cloud Costs with Movable IBM i

To protect clients’ investments in IBM i entitlements as they look to adopt hybrid cloud environments, we’ve introduced Movable IBM i. Movable IBM i allows clients to move existing on-prem entitlements to the cloud instead of purchasing new entitlements. Any IBM i client who has valid entitlements running on-prem with active SWMA (Software Maintenance Agreement) is eligible for Movable IBM i. This will allow clients to protect their existing investments while moving to a hybrid cloud environment with IBM Power Systems Virtual Server.

Movable IBM i lowers the subscription fee for new workloads on Power Systems Virtual Server compared to purchasing net new licenses. IBM i clients looking to adopt Power Systems Virtual Server will look to Movable IBM i to lower subscription fees and increase ROI. Utilizing cloud for data center divestiture of production, development, test and disaster recovery environments are some of the more common use cases we are seeing clients utilizing Power Systems Virtual Server for. Learn more about Movable IBM i by reading the data sheet here. 

Backup On-Prem or in the Cloud

Dynamic Solutions International (DSI) Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL) for IBM i allow clients to meet their most demanding backup and data center requirements. As users look to adopt cloud for HA/DR, failover and backup, we’ve now made this possible for DSI VTL and IBM i. On November 30th, the IBM i team added iSCSI software support to IBM i 7.2 and 7.3, allowing the operating system to use a standard Ethernet connection to attach tape and tape library devices. This will enable DSI VTL to connect to client environments, allowing for backups in the Power Systems Virtual Server environment. Get started with Power Systems Virtual Server here.  


Cloud Economics in Your Data Center

In July of this year, we announced that the IBM Power Systems Private Cloud Solution with Shared Utility Capacity is now available on scale-out servers. Shared Utility Capacity enables multiple systems, either scale-out or enterprise, to share resources across the servers, allowing for infrastructure optimization and flexibility for clients who have several environments. In some cases, shared utility capacity with IBM i can lead to a 75% lower price for IT resources, freeing up cash flow for your business. There are no fixed fees, meaning you only pay for the resources you use with metering by the minute. Learn more about shared utility and dynamic capacity here.

As we close out 2020 and look ahead to 2021, the community is starting to wonder: what does the future look like for the IBM i platform? Our forecast is predicting another year of innovation and cloud(i)ness. What does this mean? If you haven’t already, join this community to connect with fellow IBM i professionals and enthusiasts to share ideas and discuss the latest with the platform.  

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Tue April 05, 2022 05:02 AM

IBM iSeries cloud solution is a complete game-changer as traditional tape storage is becoming less effective (in terms of primary backup strategy), and generally, it is used for long-term data maintenance or in legal proprietary issues. Moreover, disaster recovery and data storage plans are rarely left for traditional mediums.

Mon December 07, 2020 05:49 PM

Do you have more information on ISCSI support for tapes?