IBM adds Elastic Storage to its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure
IBM is revamping the way it does cloud storage. Having already committed some $1.2 billion to establish data centers for rent in every country where it needs them, Big Blue is now offering a new hardware/software/storage capability for cloud and hybrid users that it says can lead to 90 percent savings.
Key to all of this is IBM’s new software-defined storage-as-a-service, called Elastic Storage on Cloud. This is a new capability offered by SoftLayer, the company IBM acquired last year, and whose tech is now the foundation of its cloud efforts. The new capability is said to be an outgrowth of Watson’s data management system, which famously kicked humankind’s butt on the TV game show Jeopardy.
Elastic Storage is basically a rebranded GPFS, and the service offers the following:
- SoftLayer bare metal resources
- High performance data management
- InfiniBand link to and between clustered servers
- Movement of data between customer’s on-premises infrastructure and the cloud.
Customers can take advantage of Direct Link connections between IBM’s points of presence and SoftLayer’s data centers to create private, dedicated connections. It’s likely that the availability of these will spread as IBM sets up more SoftLayer data centers acrosss the world, though the Ford Transit van access method (FTVAL) will probably be faster and less expensive when it comes to loading up very large data sets.
IBM says Elastic Storage on Cloud has been optimized for analytics workloads and technical computing tasks, for example credit risk management, financial analysis, genomics, scientific research and seismic data processing. It adds that customers can “deploy their applications on fully supported ready-to-run clusters complete with Elastic Storage, IBM Platform LSF or Platform Symphony workload management software and SoftLayer’s bare-metal infrastructure.”
Despite IBM’s claims of cost savings, a quick glance at the prices makes your eyes water. The service starts at a whopping $13,735 per 100TB per month. Compare this to SoftLayer object storage prices which begin at $0.04/GB/month – or $4,096 for 100TB a month according to our rusty maths. Nevertheless, the extra 9k or so gets you full support, software licenses and access to SoftLayer infrastructure.
photo credit: Elif Ayiter/Alpha Auer/…./ via photopin cc
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