Pricing for IBM Power Virtual Server in IBM data centers

Billing details

In your invoice, use one of the following identifiers to identify the charges that apply to the deployed resource instances:

• Consumer ID The Consumer ID groups the billing usages that are under a single resource.

• IBM Cloud Resource Names (CRNs) The IBM CRNs enable the identification and tracking of Power Virtual Server resources, such as volumes and snapshots, to manage and bill the usage of the resources.

IBM Cloud Resource Names

IBM Cloud Resource Names (CRNs) are identifiers that are assigned to uniquely identify resources within IBM Cloud. As CRNs are assigned to individual resources, a comprehensive bill is generated with individual Power Virtual Server resource billing.

When you create a resource, IBM Cloud assigns a CRN to the resource.

When you delete a workspace, the resources that are associated with the workspace are deleted and then the workspace is deleted. If you are using a dedicated host that is shared with a secondary workspace, remove the secondary workspace resources (VMs) from the dedicated host and then delete the dedicated host workspace.

For more information about IBM Cloud CRNs, see Cloud Resource Names.

To view or search for resources that are provisioned in IBM Power Virtual Server by using the assigned user tags, see Searching for Resources. Note that the user tags are not included in the response for GET API and CLI requests.

The following table lists the Power Virtual Server resources that are CRN enabled.

Power Virtual Server resources that are CRN enabled.

Logical Resource	IBM Power Virtual Server in IBM data center	IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud in Client location	Billable elements
General
Workspace			VPN IBM i DB2 Web Query
Compute
Virtual machine			Cores Memory SAP workload licenses OS licenses
Shared Processor Pool			SPP cores
Dedicated Host		X	Dedicated host capacity
Storage
Volume			Standard volume storage Image volume storage (onboarded by users) Replicated volume storage Service charges for Global replication services
Snapshot			Snapshot storage

Monthly usage

IBM Power Virtual Server instances are charged at a monthly rate that is prorated per hour. If you add resources to an LPAR during the middle of the month, the monthly bill for the LPAR reflects the resource change and the LPAR price that is prorated per hour.

To reduce costs, you can capture and delete the VM when it is not used. For more information, see Capturing and exporting a virtual machine (VM).

All prices that are mentioned in the topic are illustrative and do not represent the actual amounts that are used for billing. To generate an estimated price, use the Power Virtual Server Estimate pricing tool. For more information, see Generating an estimate.

In the following monthly usage example, the customer purchases a Power Virtual Server instance that has one core with 8 GB of memory, a 150 GB disk, and is running AIX 7200-03-02, at a base price of $250.57 per month ($0.343 per hour). As the month progresses, the customer adds more memory. The new price for the LPAR is $339.45 per month ($0.465 per hour). The monthly bill is prorated by the hour for the resources deployed.

In this example, the LPAR resources are increased (after reaching 300 hours in the month) from 8 GB to 16 GB of memory. The price of the LPAR is prorated by the hour for the final monthly price of $303.

Part number descriptions

A part number is associated with the license for the software product to be used in IBM Cloud. For detailed usage and billing information, you can refer to the part number descriptions listed in your invoice or in the IBM® Cloud billing portal.

Refer to the following table to view the part number descriptions and the associated metric IDs.

Base instances

The base instance billing depends on your virtual instance options when you create a Power Virtual Server. The machine type, number of cores, and amount of memory all affect the base instance billing. When you create your virtual server instance, the associated monthly rate is displayed. For more information, see Creating a Power Virtual Server.

The pricing for memory is calculated based on a ratio of 64 GB per core. For example, if you use more than 16 GB for 0.25 cores, you must pay a premium high-use RAM price for the excess memory. However, if you use up to 128 GB for 2 cores, you do not have to pay any premium memory price.

Operating systems

The Power Virtual Server pricing for AIX and IBM i includes license and IBM software maintenance.

Power Virtual Server provides AIX and IBM i stock images. The operating system version levels of the stock images are subject to change.

You can bring your own custom AIX or IBM i image to use on a Power Virtual Server instance, but you must purchase an operating system license for virtual server resources. The pricing for AIX and IBM i operating system license is not based on whether you use a custom image or a stock image.

IBM Power Virtual Server also provides Linux® stock images. You can select a Linux stock image that is provided by IBM or bring your own Red Hat Linux Enterprise (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) image OVA format. For a Linux subscription, you can opt to use a full Linux® subscription for Power Virtual Server or obtain the subscription for the Linux operating system directly from the vendor. For more information about how to create an OVA format Linux image, see deploying a Linux virtual machine.

If you bring your own image, you are charged for the image size and the storage tier that you use for the image. The storage unit price (per GB) for stored boot images is the same as the selected storage tier (Tier 0 or Tier 3) in which your boot disks are deployed. To generate an estimated price, use the Power Virtual Server Estimate pricing tool. For more information, see Deploying a custom image within IBM Power Virtual Server.

Linux for SAP workloads

You can deploy the following types of SAP workloads as virtual machines:

• SAP NetWeaver: For SAP NetWeaver for Linux, the charges for hardware, processors, and memory are like other types of Linux deployments. However, the SAP NetWeaver for Linux requires a different type of operating system and license to be deployed. So, the charges for these types of deployments are not same as that of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP (non-SAP OS). SAP NetWeaver can be deployed on S1022, E1080, S922, and E980 systems.

• SAP HANA: For SAP HANA, there are distinct processor and memory billing parts. The charges on these distinct parts appear on the monthly invoices. The following types of systems, processors, and memory are supported for SAP HANA:

  • System types: S1022 (for workloads less than 2 TB of RAM), E1080 (for workloads more than 2 TB of RAM), or E980.
  • Virtual processor core type: dedicated
  • Memory types: scale-out or scale-up

For SAP HANA workloads, the charges for processor and memory parts are the same as compared to non-SAP HANA workloads.

The pricing is subject to change depending on the SAP HANA operational costs.

You can also bring your own SAP (HANA or NetWeaver) image with your own subscription. For more information, see Deploying a Linux for SAP (HANA or NetWeaver) custom image.

Processor types

You are charged different rates depending on the processor type that you choose for your virtual machine (VM). Dedicated processors are priced the highest as they provide the best overall performance. Shared capped processors cost slightly more than shared uncapped processors because of their flexibility in addressing licensing restrictions. The processors are all charged on an hourly prorated basis according to the machine type, processor type, and the number of cores used in a month.

Processor cores are charged at different hourly rates depending on the core type (Dedicated, Shared uncapped, or Shared capped) and the machine type (S922, E1080, S1022, or E1080). For information on different processor type functions, see What's the difference between shared capped and shared uncapped processor performance? How do they compare to dedicated processor performance?.

All prices that are mentioned in the topic are illustrative and do not represent the actual amounts that are used for billing. To generate an estimated price, use the Power Virtual Server cost estimator tool. For more information, see Generating an estimate.

The following tables show examples of how different processor types affect the cost per system:

Pricing for shared processor pool

Shared processor pool (SPP) provides the capability to manage CPU cores efficiently. The number of cores that are assigned to an SPP depends on the entitled cores (EC) and virtual cores (VC) ratio. The EC:VP ratio varies by system type. For example, Power10 systems allow different ratios as compared to Power9 systems. For more information, see Managing the shared processor pool.

Pricing for dedicated hosts

Dedicated hosts are priced based on the host type – either an IBM Power S922 or IBM Power S1022. Each server type is metered by the hour and the price includes the entire capacity of the host.

Consider the following points for dedicated host pricing:

• You are not charged separately for SPPs that you deploy to the dedicated host.
• Software charges for the supported operating systems are metered and charged by the core.

To learn more about the dedicated host, see: dedicated host.

Storage types

The Power Virtual Server charges based on three different storage types:

• Data volumes: These are the simplest form of volume that you create. You are billed based on the current volume size at the metering time. The following table shows an example of how you are billed based on your volume creation:

  Calculation of data volume

  Volume size you create	You are billed
  10 GB	10 GB
  10+5 GB	15 GB

• Image backing volumes: These volumes are part of a boot image in your cloud-instance boot image catalog. You are billed based on the total volume sizes contained in the image. When the image has a single backing volume, you are billed based on the GB size of the single volume. When the image has multiple backing volumes, you are billed based on tallying up the sizes of all the image backing volumes. The following table shows an example of how you are billed based on your boot volume:

  Calculation of image backing volume

  Image volume size	Single or multiple backing	You are billed
  20 GB	Single backing volume	20 GB
  Volume 1 (20 GB), volume 2 (10 GB)	Multiple backing volumes	30 GB

• Deployed VM volumes: These volumes are created when you deploy a VM with an image. The deployed VMs get a copy of all the volumes in the image. Any additional data volumes attached to the deployed VM are already accounted for under Data Volumes. The following table shows an example of how you are billed based on the VMs that you deploy:

  Calculation of deployed VMs volume

  Image backing volume	You are billed
  20 GB	20 GB
  20 GB + 30 GB	50 GB

• Deployed virtual machine snapshots: The snapshots of the volumes are taken after the virtual machine is deployed. The size of the volume snapshot is related to the number of updates that are made to the virtual machine. When you take a snapshot for the first time, the size of the snapshot is a fraction of the size of the one or more volumes of the virtual machine. The size of subsequent snapshots might increase based on the changes that are made to the original volume.

For an example, consider a virtual machine with a volume of 100 GB. The size of the first snapshot is 100 GB. The size of the second snapshot might be 1 GB.

Snapshot sizes are not predictable as they are related to the updates made to the volume between two snapshots.

The following tables show examples of how different storage types affect the cost per system:

Pricing for IBM Power Virtual Server VPN (VPN) connection

When you use a VPN connection, you are billed monthly.

IBM charges with the base price hourly per connection. The base price varies per region. So, if you use one VPN connection that is active for a month, the monthly bill would be the VPN hourly base price for your region X 24 hours X 30 days. For example, if VPN is used in a US region and the US base price is $0.05 per VPN instance, the monthly price would be $36. VPN charges are associated with the Power Virtual Server Workspace resource.

On July 14, 2025, the Power Virtual Server VPNaaS product will reach its end of life. If you are using Power Virtual Server VPNaaS product, you are encouraged to move to the IBM Cloud VPC VPN to avoid VPN service interruptions.

Pricing for Power Edge Router (PER)

No additional charges are levied for PER in IBM Power Virtual Server. You are only charged based on the number of Transit Gateway connections and routing options associated to the use of PER.

The following table shows an example of the charges based on the routing option that you select:

The following table shows examples of the charges based on the number of connections that includes Direct Link, VPC, Classic that you can create:

The Transit Gateway charges indicated in the preceding tables are subjected to change. See the summary of Transit Gateway charges from the provisioning page in the IBM Cloud console. See the Pricing considerations section in the Transit Gateway documentation for more information.

End of billing

The monthly billing cycle ends when you delete the LPAR. If you scale your infrastructure up and down in response to workload requirements, your billing follows the timing of the LPAR provision change. If you stop the LPAR, the billing process is not stopped. You must delete the LPAR to stop the billing cycle.

You are still charged if the VM is in a suspended state. When your VM is inactive, you can use Dynamic Logical Partitioning (DLPAR) to resize it to a minimal state. You can drastically decrease the price per hour by reducing the VM's core count and memory.