The Strategic Challenge: The Complexity of Building a Private Cloud

Building a modern, resilient, and scalable private cloud platform from the ground up is a monumental task. It involves procuring and integrating the right hardware, installing and configuring complex software layers like Red Hat OpenShift, and ensuring all components work together seamlessly to deliver performance and reliability.  The demand is for a solution that removes the complexity and provides a fast, predictable path to a production-ready, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) capable of running both legacy and cloud-native applications, without the guesswork and integration headaches.

IBM’s strategic direction in the rapidly evolving technology landscape is firmly anchored in hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI). Central to this strategy are IBM Storage Fusion Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), OpenShift,  and IBM Satellite, two offerings designed to provide enterprises with unparalleled flexibility, control, and scalability across diverse IT environments.   

The Solution: A Turnkey Path to a Modern Private Cloud

The Li9 IBM Fusion HCI Pilot is an accelerated, expert-led service that takes you from pallet to a production-ready private cloud. We leverage the power of IBM Fusion HCI, a pre-integrated system with compute, storage, and networking, as the foundation for a robust Red Hat OpenShift environment. This engagement is designed to get your hyperconverged platform operational quickly, validated with a live migration of a virtual machine, and handed off to your empowered team, ready for you to build upon.

Deliverables

Upon completion of the IBM Fusion HCI Pilot, you will receive:

• A Deployed IBM Fusion HCI Appliance: A fully installed and connected IBM Fusion HCI system in your data center, forming the foundation of your private cloud.
• An Operational OpenShift Virtualization Platform: A configured Red Hat OpenShift environment with OpenShift Virtualization enabled, ready to host both virtual machines and containers.
• Live Migration Validation: A successful demonstration of a live VM migration, proving the high-availability and resilience of the platform.
• Comprehensive Documentation: Detailed architectural diagrams and configuration documents for your new HCI environment.
• Empowered Staff: In-depth knowledge transfer sessions to ensure your team is prepared to manage and operate the new platform effectively.

The Li9 Implementation Journey: From Pallet to Production Pilot

Our proven methodology is designed to deliver a fully functional HCI environment efficiently and effectively.

Phase 1: Discovery and Planning The engagement starts with a collaborative workshop to understand your specific goals for the pilot. We assess your data center’s power, cooling, and networking to ensure site readiness and create a detailed project plan.

Phase 2: Fusion HCI Installation & Connection Our experts handle the physical “rack and stack” of the IBM Fusion HCI appliance in your data center. We manage the entire process of connecting the system to your power and network infrastructure, ensuring a proper physical and logical foundation is established.

Phase 3: OpenShift Virtualization Deployment With the hardware in place, we install and configure Red Hat OpenShift and enable the OpenShift Virtualization feature. This creates a unified, software-defined platform to manage both your existing virtual machines and new containerized applications from a single pane of glass.

Phase 4: Validation and Knowledge Transfer To prove the platform is production-ready, we demonstrate its high-availability and resilience by performing a test live migration of a virtual machine. We then ensure your team is ready to take the keys by providing hands-on training and detailed documentation for managing your new HCI environment.

The Business Value Proposition: Achieve Radical Simplicity, Speed, and Scale

By partnering with Li9 for the IBM Fusion HCI Pilot, you can accelerate your modernization journey with a powerful, pre-integrated solution.

• Accelerated Time-to-Value: Deploy a complete private cloud in a fraction of the time it would take with a traditional, component-based approach.
• Reduced Risk & Complexity: Eliminate integration challenges and project risks with an expert-led deployment of a pre-engineered and validated solution from IBM and Red Hat.
• Future-Proof with Unified VM & Container Management: Consolidate your workloads onto a single platform with OpenShift Virtualization, simplifying operations, reducing infrastructure sprawl, and preparing for the future of applications.
• Cloud-Native Foundation: Build on a platform that not only runs today’s VM workloads but is also ready for tomorrow’s cloud-native, containerized applications.
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership: Reduce operational overhead with simplified management and a hyperconverged architecture that is easy to scale as your needs grow.
• Turnkey Service: Get everything you need—hardware, software, and expert services—from a single, trusted partner to ensure a seamless and successful pilot.

Beyond the Pilot: Full-Scale Enterprise Cloud

Li9 can provide additional services to extend your Fusion HCI platform into a full-scale enterprise cloud, including full-scale workload migration services, advanced networking and security configuration, disaster recovery planning, CI/CD integration, performance tuning, and ongoing managed services

IBM Fusion HCI with OpenShift Virtualization Demo Snippets

 Creating Virtual Machines on IBM Fusion (Showcases creating virtual machines on OpenShift Virtualization)

 Exploring the Details of VMs running on IBM Fusion (Virtual machine management and tab details) 

 Expanding Virtual Machines Storage on IBM Fusion (Expanding Persistent Storage for a Virtual Machine)

 Creating Virtual Machine Snapshots on IBM Fusion (OpenShift Virtualization snapshots)

 Migrate Existing Virtual Machines into IBM Fusion (Showcasing full VM migration)