Do you have some Questions?

If you provide us with the necessary information – typically number of LPARs and their CPU, storage and memory requirements and whether you need HA/DR in a secondary data centre we can obtain the Skytap or IBM PowerVS (or other cloud provider) costs for you. We can then present a full proposal with the platform costs and L3C migration costs.

The major cloud platforms such as Skytap on Azure and IBM PowerVS provide Power10 (and Power11 in the case of IBM PowerVS) infrastructure. This means those platforms only support OS versions of AIX & IBM i that run on Power 10.

If you have an OS version that does not run on Power10 then contact us and we can provide an alternative solution via our own infrastructure or alternative cloud platform provider or we can discuss Power9 options with either Skytap or IBM.

For Skytap backups are typically stored in Azure blob storage. For IBM PowerVS backups are stored in IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS). Note there is no physical tape backup in cloud.

Pretty much all backup tooling will work as your are moving to Power infrastructure not an emulator. At L3C we typically implement Commvault and use this for our managed services as this has proven to be effective time after time in Skytap and IBM PowerVS.

For sure a critical question. If you let us know;

• How many LPARs you have and the version of OS
• What type they are (i.e. Prod, Pre-Prod, Dev/Test, HA/DR)
• The memory and storage assigned to each
• If AIX, the DB you use (Oracle or DB2) and the version if you know it

Then we can provide a quote to migrate and optionally provide managed services within 24 hours.

If you need a rough guide plan on £4000-£6000 per LPAR for the migration (depending on whether the LPARs are non-Prod or Prod) with a separate charge for the Discovery and Design phase which really depends on the size of the environment. Obviously for large multi-LPAR environments a tailored price would be agreed.

L3C services are fixed price so yuo can be sure of budget and delivery.

Yes but only with our unique Azure Monitor integration and advanced monitoring tool.

Not necessarily. The platforms such as Skytap and IBM offer discounts if you commit to “reserve capacity” for say 12 months. This means you are committed for those 12 months and receive lower pricing than PAYG.

However we have implemented dual cloud solutions with primary in Skytap and secondary data centre in IBM (and vice versa) with replication between the 2. We have managed both environments for our clients so you don’t have to worry about operating across 2 platforms.

We can also have your Primary location within L3C Tier 3 data centres and use the cloud platforms such as Skytap (Kyndryl cloud) or IBM as the DR locations giving you more flexibility.

We also clearly document (and update) the environment we have implemented which means exit is far easier if required.

We provide a fully comprehensive  AIX, IBM i, Linux & Windows planning and execution service including;

• Discovery to gather the required technical information
• High Level and Low Level Design down to IP addresses and subnets
• Landing Zone build
• Migration Plan and Run book(s)
• Migration wave execution
• Set up of backup and monitoring
• Set up of HA/DR if required
• Knowledge Transfer and handover to your support team or your managed service provider
• Project Management.

We can also provide managed services on the cloud or hosted platform for you.

We provide our services for a fixed price per LPAR.

We understand but we have migrated some really old stuff either to the major cloud providers or to our L3C managed infrastructure. Bring out your dirty washing as the saying goes and we’ll find a cost effective solution. We can provide infrastructure in our L3C data centres in London and Slough or provide an infrastructure solution with one of our global partners.

We have a number of ISO certifications which are outlined on our Certifications page, including 27001, 27701, 9001, 20000-1 as well as Cyber Essentials and we are also FSQS registered for Financial Services clients’ reassurance.

You can also view our Case Studies page where we have been selected and trusted by a significant number of well known global companies.

We were formed in 2013 and we focus on AIX and IBM i (as well as associated Linux and Windows VMs) – migrating them to cloud or our own infrastructure and performing managed services. We are a privately owned UK Limited company. Our team is based in UK and Sofia, Bulgaria.

We work with most of the global system integrators and often perform AIX and IBM i migrations (and managed services) for them as part of a wider transformation project they run. Ask your system integrator to reach out to us (we are already on the procurement and an approved supplier to most of them) or ask us to engage with them on your behalf.

The time to migrate AIX or IBM i to cloud largely depends on you the client. We have migrated Production environments within 8 weeks, others have taken a lot longer. The key factors affecting the migration time are;

• The availability of your team to gather the discovery information we require (this is running native commands on AIX or IBM i servers for us)
• The availability of your networking team to discuss connectivity
• Whether you need to procure new connectivity services (such as ExpressRoute)
• The migration windows available
• The availability of your application teams for testing
• If you have an incumbent service provider we will need their support during the discovery and migration and we encourage to to ensure this is in place.

We will work whatever hours we need to complete the migration of your workloads and we fully expect migrations to take place overnight and at weekends.