Understanding data portability for Power Virtual Server

IBM Power Virtual Server in IBM data center

IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud in Client location

By using data portability for IBM® Power® Virtual Server, you can perform tasks such as transferring data and processing the data, either in your data center location or on a service provider location. You can port the data by using a set of tools and procedures.

You can accomplish the following tasks by using data portability:

Export the digital artifacts that are needed to implement similar workloads.
Process the data on the Power Virtual Server or on a service provider location that supports the Power architecture.

Power Virtual Server is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering. As a Power Virtual Server user, you own the data, operating system images, and configuration parameters. Power Virtual Server architecture follows a typical on-premises Power deployments to facilitate data portability. The infrastructure design enables Power Virtual Server to maintain key enterprise software certification and support as the Power Virtual Server architecture replicates a certified private cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities

Power Virtual Server provides interfaces and instructions to guide you to copy and store your content on your selected location. The content can include data that is stored on logical volumes, operating system images, and configuration parameters.

You are responsible for the use of the exported data and configuration to enable data portability to other infrastructures. You are responsible for creating and executing the plan to set up the infrastructure on a different service provider that has capabilities similar to the Power Virtual Server services.

For more information about the responsibility assignment matrix for Power Virtual Server, see High-level architecture.

Migrating the data

Migrating the data from one infrastructure to another requires planning and strategies to achieve the expected performance. Perform the steps defined in the following topics to migrate Power workloads to a Power Virtual Server:

Power Virtual Server provides the capability to capture full or selected copies of the logical volumes or data sets. By using IBM FlashCopy® feature and Power Virtual Server APIs, you can create delta snapshots, volume clones, and restore your disks. For more information, see Snapshots, cloning, and restoring.

Capturing and exporting a virtual machine

Power Virtual Server provides mechanisms to capture and export a virtual machine (VM). For more information, see Capturing and exporting a virtual machine (VM).

Data ownership

The data that is exported to on-premises or on service providers is classified as customer content. Apply the full customer ownership and licensing rights, as stated in the IBM Cloud Service Agreement.