Glossary Term

PowerVS (IBM Power Virtual Server)

IBM Power infrastructure hosted in IBM Cloud, running IBM i, AIX, or Linux on Power without changing the operating system or database underneath.

Definition

PowerVS is IBM's cloud offering for Power Systems workloads, providing the same processor architecture, operating environments, and Db2 for i database engine as an on-premises Power server, hosted in IBM Cloud instead of a local data center. It is built for extending or migrating existing IBM i, AIX, and Linux on Power workloads, not for re-platforming them onto different architecture.

Buyers use PowerVS to add disaster recovery capacity, burst capacity, or a bounded environment for a new project, such as an AI proof of concept, without disturbing the primary on-premises system of record.

Example

A manufacturer might extend a single reporting workload into PowerVS for a watsonx pilot while its core ERP stays on the on-premises Power server it has run for a decade.