IBM i application hosting is more straight-forward – and much less expensive – than hosting other platform applications. Plain and simple.
This brief article will provide you with what you need to clearly come to the same conclusion.
For those you familiar with IBM i architecture, the reasons will be especially clear once you understand what is needed to support applications that run on such platforms as Windows, UNIX, and Linux.
Cloud hosting options for platforms other than IBM i require more elements adding complexity and higher related costs.
Diagram 1 highlights the key elements that are required for cloud hosting with multiple non-IBM i platforms – particularly to support Windows, UNIX, and Linux.
Diagram 1 – Typical Elements For Cloud Hosting
For starts, notice that the hardware elements for compute, network, and storage are separate. That’s because with other platforms, the servers generally connect to external SAN/NAS storage. In contrast, with our IBM i hosting environment, compute and storage reside in the same server and are easily managed by IBM i single level storage architecture.
Next, to provide for multi-tenant hosting, the hardware elements must be virtualized so that these memory and storage resources are independent of the hardware devices to satisfy the user needs.
A hypervisor is needed to manage the virtualized multi-tenant hosting environment. The hypervisor allows a single console to easily manage the virtualized memory and storage pooled for the hosting environment.
Provisioning software is needed to allocate the distinct resources each user will need. Provisioning allocates memory capacity, compute speed, and storage capacity. Provisioning also provides for rapid incremental changes – larger or smaller – as needed by the customer.
Diagram 2 shows the same key hosting elements – computer and storage, virtualization, hypervisor and provisioning – within the IBM i architecture.
Diagram 2 – Typical Elements For IBM i Cloud Hosting
The elegant IBM i architecture integrates most of the elements required for hosting.
Single-level storage architecture masks the complexity of memory, computing, and storage management.
The IBM i operating system includes its own hypervisor, virtualization and provisioning. It’s all included in IBM i PowerVM
The IBM HMC manages the virtualization, hypervisor, and provisioning for the IBM i server.
And because it’s already built into the IBM i operating system, there is no need to make a significant investment in the separate hardware or software management categories needed for cloud hosting other platforms. The IBM i architecture eliminates the related complexity of integrating separate software elements for virtualization, hypervisor, and provisioning.
This unique IBM i architecture dramatically lowers our hosting costs because we don’t need to invest in extra hardware and software elements needed for non-IBM i platforms. This also means we don’t have to get extra training to integrate them to make them work. Because we already know the IBM i (we have been working with it since 1988) we require no special or extra skills for these elements.
Most of the other hosting companies that also manage IBM i servers approach their hosting environment with all of these elements. Because of their investment in these elements as well as a mindset that looks at managing IBM i like Windows or UNIX, they needlessly super-impose these elements on the few IBM i servers they may have – which adds to their higher cost to you.
As you can see, the IBM i architecture already has the key elements needed for multi-tenant hosting. It’s just truly remarkable that the IBM I architects had so much vision to integrate this into the initial design so that nothing extra needs to be added — and you can pay less with IBM i cloud hosting.
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