Azure Virtual Machines vs. IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC

It's well suited to delivering information about our sports events as during the events a lot of processing power is needed and instantly becomes available by scaling out when the event is over the service can be scaled right back making massive savings. We use it for football, horse racing, Olympics games etc, it is also used when things happen in the world like right now there is a lot of concern over the Russia and Ukraine conflict, since the demand for this information is high we instantly scale to meet the demand of our news feed services. I believe up to 90% of the UK's News, sports and media information actually passes through our computer systems, we are a market leading news and information service and Azure Virtual Machines provide us with the reliability that we need so that we can provide a rock solid reliable news and information service to the world.

Incentivized

One scenario that immediately came to my mind was large-scale data processing, IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is well-suited for organizations that require high-performance computing capabilities, particularly when processing large amounts of data. It can also be useful for companies or organizations that wish to migrate their workplace to the cloud and it may suite companies that have strict compliance requirements since the servers have robust security features.

Incentivized

• You can login to Azure VMs using SSO with your Azure Ad account
• Azure VMs are securely accessible from anywhere in the world, with Azure Bastion
• You can execute scripts on the VM from the Azure portal without logging in to it

Incentivized

• Scalability: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers enable businesses to simply and quickly scale up or down the resources they require in response to changing business demands. This enables firms to respond to traffic spikes, requests for new services, or changes in business size without the need for additional hardware purchases or maintenance.
• Cost savings: By employing virtual servers in the cloud, enterprises can decrease capital expenditures for hardware and infrastructure while also lowering ongoing operational expenses by removing server maintenance and management costs. This can result in significant cost savings for enterprises, particularly those that need to raise or decrease their computer capacity fast and easily.
• High availability: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is built with high availability in mind, giving enterprises the certainty that their applications and data will be available and accessible even if hardware fails or other disruptions occur. This assists enterprises in maintaining business continuity and lowering the chance of downtime, which is crucial for firms that rely on 24/7 access to their systems. Furthermore, IBM's comprehensive network and security features aid in the prevention of data breaches and other security risks, assuring the availability and reliability of their applications and data.

Incentivized

• Pricing can be a concern if you are truly agnostic to which cloud you are building your particular solution in.
• The UI, as is the case with any cloud provider, is crowded.
• As with any cloud provider, it can be difficult to tune in exactly the right amount of servers for your needs...you might find yourself under/overprovisioning.

Incentivized

• Softlayer is designed primarily for advanced clients, and can be a little finicky like many other advanced services, such as highly-customizable options for nearly every part of a service. You build your servers by specs, just like a real server, rather than clicking a few buttons to get a basic cookie-cutter server.
• Costs are much higher than one would expect, however, you do get what you pay for, and having high-quality equipment available at hourly rates is going to cost.
• Support is surprisingly mediocre, and the primary cause of most complaints about softlayer. I personally have had no problems with support, but, remember that this is an "advanced" service, and even my eyes go cross-eyed looking at the config options of a server. I would imagine support is focused and trained for dealing with experienced Linux admins, and developers, and would not be of much help to anyone that accidentally ventured in, expecting an EC2 style experience.

Incentivized

It has a flexible and affordable pricing, easy to configure and manage. It is easy to spawn one or multiple instances and have them up and running in no time

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They are very easy and intuitive, very easy to deploy

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Always available when you need an instance.

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Most of the instances work on hypervisors with good processors, but not all of them.

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I give the overall support for Azure Virtual Machines a 7 because I think while the overall support do a great job there are still areas that it could improve on such as efficiency and speed. So while I only give it a 7 and it has some issues it is still better than the overall support at Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.

Incentivized

It is adequate, but you need to be ready to argue your point - which is fair enough, I suppose, but being given the opposite of the benefit of the doubt every time does not necessarily result in an enjoyable user experience.

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We did not use IBM professional services to implement IBM Cloud Virtual Servers.

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Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Compute supports Windows, but is really geared towards Linux. You can install Windows on some Linode servers, but again, Linode is geared towards Linux. AWS does everything but is complex and can have high costs. If you want to host Windows servers in the cloud, nothing beats Azure. From licensing to management, Microsoft Azure provides the easiest way to deploy and manage Windows Servers in the cloud, especially if you utilize other Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 an Visual Studio subscriptions.

Incentivized

IBM Cloud Virtual Servers offer more customization options than Amazon EC2, with the ability to select from a range of operating systems, storage types, and network configurations. IBM also provides a wide range of tools and services to help manage and optimize your virtual servers, including a web-based console, CLI, and API.

AWS EC2 is a more managed platform, with a focus on providing a simple and easy-to-use interface. Amazon provides a range of predefined instance types, each with different specs and pricing, to make it easy to find the right option for your needs. AWS also offers a number of management and monitoring tools, but these are often more basic than what is available from IBM.

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It worked well for us in the beginning, it works well for us when we have more instances.

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• It's so easy to spin up new instances, that it becomes also to easy to have to many of them to manage. Many teams end up with a couple of hundreds of VMs after a short while, making the whole thing very hard to maneuver
• Azure VMs are the next step for us to rely on Onprem servers, and leaving the management of the infrastructure to the professionals
• The ease of use, is also important when our main focus is to deliver new applications and integrations fast, and not having to worry about infrastructure. We sell bottles, not CPUs

Incentivized

• IBM Cloud Virtual Servers has allowed us to reduce our costs of training and development by 100%. We no longer need hardware that is specific to the development environment. This means we can act more quickly on new business initiatives since they are not hampered by the availability of hardware, downtime, or maintenance windows. The time savings stemming from this alone makes the investment pay for itself.

Incentivized