Connectria provides proven customer success and technical proficiency. Our purpose-built data centers and our in-house technical experts leverage a deep understanding of both IBM and cloud providers to seamlessly deliver innovative solutions. Our IBM with AWS hybrid cloud offering delivers a unique opportunity to leverage existing IBM Power Systems investments with the hyperscale cloud benefits of AWS.

By running IBM i and AIX systems with low-latency connectivity to AWS, we simplify complexity by assuming full responsibility for the operational wellbeing of your IBM Power System environment. Our hybrid architecture begins with an initial assessment of your current environment, after which we plan for and execute a migration of your existing IBM i/AIX environment, as-is, to Connectria’s modern IBM Power Systems environment, while the connected/dependent x86 workloads are migrated to AWS.

Here, Connectria’s new Edge Connect service enables customers to bring their devices to Connectria data centers where we can provide the rack, power, cooling, as well as connectivity needed. Some good examples of devices include SD-WAN appliances, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Routers, or hardware that cannot be virtualized.

What is an Edge Connect Service?

An Edge Connect service is a way for organizations to bring devices into the data center. Our Edge Connect service enables our customers to bring their co-located devices into our data center to help support their managed cloud solutions. Edge Connect can support any number of devices today and we already have customers leveraging the product for MPLS routers, network security appliances, and SD-Wan devices. Edge Connect supports 1Gb/s, 10Gb/s, and 25Gb/s connectivity.

You can either leverage Connectria’s highly available internet services, or your own dedicated direct internet access (DIA), or MPLS drops to help connect your managed cloud solution to your global WAN infrastructure using Edge Connect. This may include additional network security appliances which we can provide, either physical or virtual, within your environment. Edge Connect can also provide interconnectivity between your managed Power Systems Cloud, and physical x86 hosts co-located inside of our data centers.

Connectria Edge Connect at a Glance

Feature – Description

• Connectivity – Fiber Optic LC
• Bandwidth Options – 1, 10, or 25 Gb Ethernet
• Monitoring – Up/Down and Transmit/Receive usage
• Components – Switch Port, SFP, fiber optic cable
• Tagging – Dot1q tagging supported

Hybrid Cloud Architecture Connectivity

Through mechanisms such as our DIA or Edge Connect service, we can set up MIMIX replication from an existing IBM i LPAR to an LPAR located in the Connectria data center. We have a team of specialists with MIMIX who can assist from start to finish with the implementation of logical replication. We support both data domain and cybernetics virtual tape libraries (VTLs) for virtual tape replication.

Connectria Edge Connect is a way for you to connect collocated equipment in our data center to your environment as well as public cloud services. The connection is made via fiber optic using LC connectors. With Edge Connect, we can attach layer 3 point to point and provide either Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) or static routing using the service.

Use Cases

There are many different ways Connectria’s hybrid architecture can work for your environment such as:

• MPLS Routers
• Collocated firewall
• Physical appliances
• Physical SD-WAN Devices
• AWS Direct Connect Circuits
• MPLS circuit layer 3 handoffs
• Physical hosts – x86, Power Systems, HPUX, SPARC

The primary use case may be to make Connectria’s Power Systems cloud a spoke off of your Global WAN for management access. The intent of Edge Connect is to simplify this strategy by providing a layer 3 connection between your WAN infrastructure, and the cloud. This allows you to maintain control of the connectivity up to the edge of Connectria’s cloud infrastructure.

This is a very cost-effective solution to interconnect your IT ecosystem to your critical workloads under management with Connectria, whether that is your IBM Power Systems cloud, or your CSP (AWS/Azure, etc.). You have the ability to layer in your WAN services, and any additional network security appliances required to meet your business, and compliance needs. Integration with your global WAN strategy, as well as the additional systems such as co-located (customer managed) firewall, and IDS/IPS appliances are often a requirement to ensure end-to-end secure communication between your end-users, and the systems they support, or the services they consume.

Connect with Connectria

Along with Edge Connect, we can also provide virtual or physical firewalls for customers within their environment. Our standard for firewalls is the Palo Alto firewalls. However, we can support Cisco firewalls if that is a business requirement. Ultimately, this can be a way for customers to connect their sites via VPN tunnel, or end-users via VPN client, to the environment using our highly available, internet services.

Contact one of our experts for more information on our Edge Connect service, our hybrid architecture, or any of our other services! We can help you and your team do more of the things that make your organization successful. You can also register for access to our most recent webinar to learn more.