IBM Cloud Kubernetes Services let us bootstrap and learn blockchain quickly.
June 17, 2020

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Services let us bootstrap and learn blockchain quickly.

Zachary Jones | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

We elected to use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service because of the excellent support for blockchain (hyperledger). The fact that we could containerized master nodes and move the chain outside of IBM cloud services when that time arrived. As well, the presence and availability of IBM consulting services enabled us to feel confident that we would never the stuck at sea.

Pros

  • Blockchain Abilities
  • Brand Trust
  • Impressive GUI/appearance

Cons

  • AWS-Parity
  • Blockchain bootstrapping was great ROI and key to our biz.
  • Doing things outside of the limited feature set was harder and lowered the ROI.
We have had a good time learning and modifying cluster services with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. I think it would be easier if we stuck to IBM's purely-native cluster service GUI and metaphors — in fact, I know it would be. In our case, we have a client demand to be multi-cloud, so IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service was a first stop for POC, since one of the cloud environments the client expects is IBM.
I haven't used Watson third-party services here, yet. I can say from past experience that Watson third-party services were impressive out-of-box, and better that other cloud-native 'AI' services. The enrichment of data followed cognitive features that I expected to find, which was a sign of well-composed services of these kinds.
Routing services, like API gateways, forced you to do everything programmatically through config files. I would have preferred a GUI for minor configuration changes. I think the intended idiom was that you could push configs from versional sources, while still having a bit of GUI for 'things you'd forget'. It's a nice idea, and maybe works well when IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is your main tool of choice for all things. For a multi-cloud person, it was just an asymmetry that added some frustration.
  • IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
  • IBM Cloud Virtual Servers
  • IBM Cloud Object Storage
  • IBM Cloud Certificate Manager
  • IB M Blockchain Platform
We have been able to rapidly explore the containerization of our array of cloud metaphors, including IBM blockchain services. The impression on everyone on the team has been very high, if not also daunting at times because of the steep learning curve to blockchain.
The tutorials, especially around blockchain, have been good quality. We found the certificate services vague and unclear, as well as a simple way to firewall or whitelist traffic (we seem to need to 'manually' build a node to be the firewall). When services are present and running's he feel perfect and stable, and the interface use them is not awful, like AWS.

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