---
name: vpc-about-vpc
title: Overview
description: Use IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud to create your own space in IBM Cloud®. A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a secure, isolated virtual network that combines the security of a private cloud with the availability and scalability of IBM's public cloud.
last-updated: 2026-05-19
---

> ## Documentation Index
> The table of contents for this documentation set is at https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?format=markdown
> The index for all IBM Cloud docs is at: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use these files to discover more information as needed.

# Overview
{: #about-vpc}

Use IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud to create your own space in IBM Cloud®. A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a secure, isolated virtual network that combines the security of a private cloud with the availability and scalability of IBM's public cloud.
{: shortdesc}

## Logical isolation
{: #about-vpc-logical-isolation}

VPC gives your applications logical isolation from other networks, while providing scalability and security. To make this logical isolation possible, the VPC is divided into subnets that use a range of private IP addresses. You can create subnets in suggested prefix ranges, or bring your own public IP address range (BYOIP) to your IBM Cloud account. By default, all resources within the same VPC can communicate with each other over the private network, regardless of their subnet.

## Quick instance provisioning with high network performance
{: #about-vpc-quick-instance-provisioning}

You can quickly provision scalable compute resources in your VPC by creating *virtual server instances* with the core and RAM configuration that's best for your workload. You can select from the supported stock images or custom images that were imported from IBM Cloud Object Storage. All images are cloud-init enabled. You can connect to your instance without using a password by adding *SSH keys*.

You can create instances with up to 80 Gbps network bandwidth per instance. Each instance can be multi-homed, that is, you can create multiple network interfaces per instance.


##  Multi-architecture images
{: #about-vpc-multi-architecture-images}

You can choose to create *virtual server instances* with different operating systems on:

   - x86_64 processor architecture
   - [Deprecated]{: tag-deprecated} s390x processor architecture

For more information, see [Images](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-about-images&format=markdown).

## Storage capabilities
{: #about-vpc-storage-capabilities}

When you create an instance, a Block Storage volume is automatically attached as a primary boot volume. You can increase the capacity of the boot volume to 250 GB when you're using first-generation volume profiles, and 32,000 GB when you're using the `sdp` profile. To add secondary data storage to your instance, create Block Storage for VPC volumes or File Storage for VPC shares.

You can use Block Storage for VPC snapshots to create point-in-time copies of your boot or data volumes, create copies of the snapshots in other regions, and create volumes from the snapshots. You can automate the creation of the snapshots with the IBM Cloud® Backup for VPC service.

## External connectivity
{: #about-vpc-external-connectivity}

Several options are available for enabling your instances to communicate with the public internet:
* To enable all instances in a subnet to send outgoing traffic, attach a *public gateway* to the subnet.
* To enable communication to and from a specific instance, independent of whether the subnet is attached to a public gateway, associate the instance with a *floating IP*.
* To enable secure connectivity, use the Virtual Private Network (VPN) service.

## Security
{: #about-vpc-security}

For instance-level protection, use *security groups* that act as virtual firewalls to restrict traffic for one or more instances. For subnet-level protection, use *access control lists* (ACLs) to limit a subnet's inbound and outbound traffic.

## High availability
{: #about-vpc-high-availability}

A *region* is the geographical location where you deploy the VPC's services, resources, and applications. Each region contains *zones*, which are logically isolated zones with independent infrastructures. You can deploy resources in multiple zones to achieve fault tolerance and high availability.

Use load balancers to distribute your network traffic across a set of virtual server instances to improve performance and availability. You can set up a load balancer to distribute incoming application traffic across instances in a single zone or across multiple zones within a region.

## Interconnectivity
{: #about-interconnectivity}

IBM has the following offerings that can help you interconnect VPCs:

* [IBM Cloud Direct Link](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/dl?topic=dl-get-started-with-ibm-cloud-dl&format=markdown) allows you to interconnect a VPC with an on-prem network.
* [IBM Cloud Transit Gateway](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/transit-gateway?topic=transit-gateway-getting-started&interface=ui&format=markdown) allows you to interconnect VPCs to each other and various other resources.

## Classic access
{: #about-classic-access}

You can set up access from a VPC to your IBM Cloud classic infrastructure, including Direct Link connectivity. One VPC per region can communicate with classic resources. For more information, see [Setting up access to classic infrastructure](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-setting-up-access-to-classic-infrastructure&format=markdown).

## Next steps
{: #about-vpc-next-steps}

To get started with the API and CLI, [set up your environment](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-set-up-environment&format=markdown).
To learn how to create VPC resources, see these tutorials:

* [Using the IBM Cloud console to create VPC resources](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-creating-a-vpc-using-the-ibm-cloud-console&format=markdown)
* [Creating VPC resources with CLI and API](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-creating-vpc-resources-with-cli-and-api&interface=cli&format=markdown)

For a list of features not yet supported in VPC, see [Limitations](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-limitations&format=markdown).