IBM Cloud is our last general-purpose cloud getting into the GPU game. IBM falls victim to the traditional enterprise hubris that leads companies to be opinionated about things that the market has already decided on.
Instead of Slurm, IBM pushes you to use LSF. Instead of Weka or VAST, IBM pushes you to use Spectrum Scale (their GPFS). Instead of kubernetes, IBM pushes you to use OpenShift. This is all supposed to be to your benefit, Mr. Customer, because IBM knows better than you. Except for the fact that it is not, and they don’t. Even the IBM AI Research division uses SLURM over LSF.
Unfortunately, when we tried to line up testing with IBM, they went so far as to deactivate our account and block us from making new sign-ups
IBM blocking us from testing their services L
Even when trying to circumvent this verification process, IBM’s Account Verification team (a different team than the Analyst Relations and Product Management team we were originally working with) called the cell phone number included in the account sign up process and pestered us with questions about what we were doing on the platform. “Research” was not good enough, we needed to explain exactly what we were trying to do with the new account.
Learning that a GPU is “extra brain power” the CPU lacks
Though there are lots of promotions available via coupon code, in the default region of Frankfurt it is hard to justify $12.25 per H100 GPU, per hour…
With all that said, it did take us only 45 seconds to spin up a new machine, a little bit longer to assign a floating IP, and access it. NVIDIA drivers, docker, and the nvidia container toolkit are not pre-installed in the base image, causing a bit more headache before we could get started with testing. But it worked.
We were about halfway through a simple download speed test using docker when IBM once again found our account and shut us down. We maintain IBM’s rating as a bronze tier provider until we are able to test their services in the future.