IBM PowerVS offers businesses a powerful, flexible cloud solution designed to streamline operations, enhance security, and optimize hybrid environments. In this guide, you’ll discover everything you need to know about how IBM PowerVS can transform your IT infrastructure and support future growth.
Welcome to PowerVS 101
If you’ve been scratching your head wondering, “What is PowerVS, and why should I care?” we’ve got your back.
IBM PowerVS (Power Virtual Server) is a family of configurable, multi-tenant, virtual IBM Power servers. That means it can be customized to the end user’s specifications and can service multiple users simultaneously.
PowerVS also has access to IBM Cloud services for business continuity planning, modernization, and data center optimization; it even has a use case for hybrid disaster recovery.
Basically, PowerVS supports a streamlined cloud adoption experience for IBM i, AIX, and other Power Systems through modern innovations—such as AI—and uses those tools to optimize your data center.
By leveraging the cloud as a disaster recovery site in a hybrid environment, PowerVS provides a secure and reliable platform for hosting identical copies of critical applications and data from the on-premises environment to minimize downtime and impact.
Now that you know the basic shape of the tool, let’s walk through the key benefits of IBM Cloud PowerVS and what they can do for you.
What Are The Benefits of IBM PowerVS And What’s Included
PowerVS has been in use since 2019, making it a newer addition to the Power Systems family. Its popularity has increased as the cloud computing market has grown over the last five years, with an estimated growth of $675B in 2024 alone.
A key benefit of PowerVS is stability; IBM is a well-established brand with a history of reliability. You know they are a trusted provider, and that’s worth a lot.
PowerVS also supports IBM i and AIX, which are not supported by other major cloud providers such as AWS and Azure.
Furthermore, IBM PowerVS allows for pay-as-you-use billing to manage costs. You can also add capacity to your Power infrastructure on demand within minutes, work on nonproduction tasks and production environments simultaneously, migrate to a hybrid cloud, and connect to services to transform business models (including web, DevOps, and IBM Db2 workloads).
What Exactly Can PowerVS Do?
PowerVS IBM Cloud is an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution that features many sought-after components, including but not limited to:
- modern global data centers with on-site staff and infrastructure
- configuration variety in system, cores, storage, network, OS (operating systems), and management
- fast provisioning to get workloads up and running on demand
- essential and cost-free 24-7 customer support in chat and on the phone
- infrastructure customization for things like number of virtual server instances, number of cores, data volume size and type, network interfaces, and amount of memory
PowerVS allows clients using IBM i and AIX to expand their IBM Power resources by deploying both on-premises and off-premises.
Where Does AI Fit Into The PowerVS Picture?
PowerVS is also compatible with watsonx, IBM’s AI and data platform built for enterprises.
Watsonx simplifies the analysis of preventive operational parameters derived from SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) software, which “could help identify patterns that indicate potential asset failures and establish context around the health of devices,” says IBM.
IBM’s watsonx AI provides streamlined systems across natural language processing and data analytics, and its capabilities extend across multiple industries. This allows companies in every sector to harness AI-driven insights and automation.
All Power products are built to work with AI, and PowerVS is no exception, giving it a modern edge—critical in today’s tech landscape.
How Secure is PowerVS?
PowerVS provides top-notch infrastructure security and is compliant and validated to the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services control requirements, making it a secure platform and a top choice for banks.
That said, the end user is responsible for the security of the OS and applications running on PowerVS, which can make regular maintenance a heavy lift after purchasing PowerVS.
In basic terms: PowerVS is automatically secure, while whatever apps or services you put on top of it are not. You’re responsible for maintaining the security of any applications attached to PowerVS.
Every set of armor has its chinks, so to speak. But we’ll touch on how to shore up those gaps later. For now, let’s look at some of PowerVS’s abilities in action.
IBM PowerVS in Action: Real-life Examples of Proven Results
Now that you know what PowerVS has under the hood, you may be wondering if those capabilities are proven in the real world. We’ve got you covered there too. Take a look at two cases that show the impact of PowerVS.
Ricoh USA
First up we have Ricoh USA, a digital information management company with a track record of workplace enablement solutions.
IBM has served as a delivery partner for Ricoh USA for nearly 10 years. In 2020, Ricoh USA was tasked with figuring out a way to help one of their clients save costs and increase efficiency. This client needed to shut down their data centers and move their workloads to the cloud.
Ricoh USA didn’t have data centers in the European countries where their client was operating. But they didn’t need them. They already had IBM, which holds IBM Cloud data centers in Europe.
By leveraging IBM PowerVS Cloud, Ricoh USA achieved up to 40% in potential savings by eliminating annual data center operating costs for their client, paired with four hours of possible reduction in customers’ daily data backup time.
Ricoh USA’s client’s users are now able to connect privately from on-premises office locations to the hybrid cloud environment in Europe—running their IBM i applications on IBM Cloud while also leveraging a variety of independent software as a service (SaaS) applications.
Because the migration had such successful results, Ricoh USA can confidently offer this service to other clients in need, and they now have a global reach they never had before. PowerVS helped open new markets and opportunities they can tap into for years to come.
University of Fukui Hospital
In another case, PowerVS came to the aid of University of Fukui Hospital. The hospital owned all the physical servers and storage within its machine room and was having issues with space, costs, the burden of operational management, data backup, and countermeasures in times of disaster.
IBM helped them move to a hybrid cloud to increase the accessibility and security of their data, providing a more streamlined system.
By using a combination of offerings that includes IBM PowerVS, the hospital rolled out a security-focused system designed for high availability. The updated environment runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing disaster countermeasures and transitioning electronic patient records to IBM Cloud.
The number of on-premises servers was reduced by 70%, which reduced the load on the system operation staff. Users can now access necessary information anytime, anywhere.
These changes led to a reduction in staff workloads and costs while solving backup support issues, contributing to better preparation for times of disaster.
These studies have two things in common:
- They both benefited financially and systematically from PowerVS.
- They both required additional tools and services to get the job done.
That leads us into our next point: PowerVS requires additional support to achieve its full impact.
You’re Ready for PowerVS: Now What?
If you’ve decided to invest in PowerVS, the next thing you need is the right partner. We’re here to tell you what that partner looks like.
CloudFirst can help you with everything that needs to happen after you buy PowerVS.
PowerVS may be the foundation, but you’re on your own for successful migration and additional security.
Unless you bring us into the fold.
First up is migration. You need to move every scrap of data and every application from one environment to another and then configure them into workable shape without any downtime. But before you get overwhelmed, take a breath—we can help you do all of that and then some.
Our IBM Cloud Support includes migration support, monitoring, operating system patches and updates, admin support and management, backup management (including automated backups), and more. All customizable, all competitively priced.
And the downtime? No sweat. We offer a 100% uptime guarantee with our high availability solutions. We make migration look easy.
With our IBM i Security solutions, you can build the perfect defense for your mission-critical applications on top of PowerVS once your migration is successfully completed.
We also provide a security risk assessment, which thoroughly examines over a dozen categories of security values, reports on findings, and delivers recommendations for addressing vulnerabilities. We combine that with a recommended comprehensive plan to effectively reduce risk and ensure the security of your systems.
We even have you covered in a worst-case scenario event with our disaster recovery resources.
CloudFirst is also the proud home base for ezAutomate, a single console for deploying and distributing software, updating operating systems and applications, managing software licensing, monitoring and optimizing IT processes, and detecting and remediating vulnerabilities.
Within the ezAutomate solution, you have your pick of services:
- patch automation
- system automation
- vulnerability management
- automated server and endpoint security
- cloud gateway protection
- AI-driven security information and event management
- a dedicated security operations center
- network monitoring and administration
- performance management
You can bundle any of these offerings to create the solution that best meets your needs. Once you have PowerVS implemented, we can handle everything that follows to ensure you have the most secure, efficient system possible.
We Can Help You Get The Most Out of Your IBM PowerVS Service
Well done, class. We can tell you’ve been paying attention. But just to be safe, let’s recap.
Today we learned the finer points of what it means to invest in PowerVS. Now you know that:
- PowerVS is a solid choice for infrastructure as a service.
- PowerVS does not secure additional applications and services.
- You are responsible for maintaining and securing any applications and services you deploy on top of PowerVS infrastructure.
- CloudFirst can help all of that stress and responsibility fade away with our comprehensive offerings across AI-driven automation, 24-7 support, and customizable bundles.
Don’t wait until you need it. Reach out and request a quote for managed services for your PowerVS deployment today and save yourself precious time and energy.
