VMware as a Service overview
IBM Cloud® for VMware as a Service provides the VMware Cloud Director™ platform as either a dedicated or shared managed service. IBM® performs the configuration, hosting, operations, and lifecycle management of the VMware® by Broadcom software so you can quickly deploy your VMware-based cloud computing environments. Compute resources are available as either dedicated or multitenant hosts that use IBM Cloud bare metal servers. Dedicated single-tenant VMware sites provide extra isolation and support multiple host configuration options to support flexible workload requirements.
VMware as a Service multitenant instances are deployed to all supported regions by IBM. Create your virtual data centers (VDCs) on the IBM managed infrastructure. VMware as a Service single-tenant instances are provisioned and managed by your organization.
For complete billing details for both multitenant and single-tenant models, see the About tab on the VMware as a Service provision page.
Find out more about the VMware as a Service instance models in the following video.
VMware as a Service single-tenant
The VMware as a Service single-tenant consumption model provides the option to deploy managed VMware environments with a dedicated infrastructure. You can select from a choice of bare metal servers and storage infrastructure components to create a single-tenant VMware site. You manage the capacity of the infrastructure.
The combination of the single-tenant infrastructure and a software stack that includes VMware ESXi™, VMware vCenter®, VMware NSX-T™, and Cloud Director is called a site. Sites are the single-tenant VMware platform that is used to host one or more VMware VDCs. VMware VDCs are used to deploy VMware workloads to create virtualized networking, and to connect to external networks that include the public internet and the IBM private network. You can start with as little as two dedicated bare metal servers to deploy or migrate existing VMware workloads into a VMware Cloud Director VDC.
For VMware as a Service single-tenant, you first create the dedicated site and then you create the VDCs after the site is ready.
VMware as a Service multitenant
The VMware as a Service multitenant consumption model provides the same capabilities and experience as the single-tenant model. With VMware as a Service multitenant, your workloads share the VMware site platform of infrastructure and VMware components. VMware workloads across different Cloud accounts are securely isolated by VMware Cloud Director virtualization of networking, storage, CPU, and RAM.
For VMware as a Service multitenant, you start by creating the multitenant VDC with a choice of on-demand pay as you go pricing or reserved pricing plans. IBM Operations manages the physical CPU, RAM, and storage infrastructure capacity.
VMware as a Service features
The VMware as a Service single-tenant and multitenant models share the following features:
- The VMware Cloud Director instance that you log in to provides a 99.99% availability SLA.
- Unique provider-managed encryption keys per instance with encrypted VMware storage profiles.
- Single sign-on (SSO) with role-based authentication and authorization from IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) to VMware Cloud Director.
- Improved provisioning speed, availability, and resilience.
- Regional-level High Availability through creating VMware Cloud Director VDCs in multiple data centers in the same region.
- VMware infrastructure health and patching is managed by IBM Operations up through the hypervisor.
- Full compatibility to run existing VMware workloads. Migration of existing IBM Cloud, on-premises or other workloads are fully supported.
- Create and delete VDCs to deploy VMware workload vApps and virtual machines in VMware Cloud Director.
- Public-only or private-only networking for management and workload connectivity
- Secure interconnectivity through IBM Cloud Transit Gateway
- Optional data protection through the Veeam® Backup and Replication service.
- Optional VM and vApp migration through the VMware Cloud Director Availability service.
VMware as a Service single-tenant features
For single-tenant instances, first define a VMware environment by provisioning a VMware as a Service single-tenant Cloud Director site. Then, create VMware as a Service single-tenant VDCs to deploy your workloads.
The VMware as a Service single-tenant consumption model provides the following features:
- The highest level of isolation, control, and consistency of the underlying VMware environment.
- Each VMware as a Service single-tenant instance contains the following VMware components:
- Dedicated VMware ESXi hosts
- Dedicated VMware vCenter
- Multiple performance options for attached vSAN™ and Network File Storage (NFS v3)
- Dedicated VMware NSX-T with dedicated networking
- Dedicated VMware Cloud Director
- Right-size and scale of the VMware environment:
- Add and remove VMware Cloud Director PVDCs
- Add and remove VMware vCenter clusters
- Add and remove hosts per VMware vCenter cluster
- Add and remove storage per VMware vCenter cluster
- Monthly billing for the dedicated infrastructure and components.
VMware as a Service multitenant features
For multitenant instances, create a VDC that deploys on an existing VMware multitenant infrastructure that is created and managed by IBM.
The VMware as a Service multitenant consumption model provides the following features:
- Shares resources with others by using a balanced VMware environment profile to support a wide range of needs.
- Pay-per-use consumption model:
- On-demand hourly pricing based on resource usage. Resources are allocated as needed.
- Reserved monthly pricing based on the allocation size. Resources are pre-allocated and guaranteed.
- Billing is determined by the consumption of virtualized CPU (vCPU), RAM, and networking.
- Add or remove vCPU and RAM limits as needed.
Billing specifications for VMware as a Service
VMware as a Service single-tenant instances incur charges for the following components.
- NFS size and performance tiers used
- Host type and counts used
- Egress to public networking
- Ingress to private networking (optional)
- Networking edge types and counts
- Veeam Backup and Replication service (optional)
VMware as a Service multitenant instance charges are based on either the on-demand or reserved pricing models.