IBM PowerVM vs VMware vSphere comparison

IBM and VMware are both solutions in the Server Virtualization Software category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5. IBM holds a 1.2% mindshare in SVS, compared to VMware’s 19.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of VMware users who would recommend it.

IBM PowerVM

Read 33 IBM PowerVM reviews

2,224 Views
1,913 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

VMware vSphere

Read 449 VMware vSphere reviews

36,496 Views
30,140 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM PowerVM

VMware vSphere

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

IBM PowerVM and VMware vSphere are major competitors in the virtualization software industry. While both offer robust feature sets, IBM PowerVM has a slight edge due to its resource optimization and high availability, although VMware vSphere stands out with comprehensive management and flexibility.

Features: IBM PowerVM is known for optimizing resources, high security, and top-notch availability. It stands out for handling large workloads reliably and with stability. VMware vSphere is recognized for centralized management and flexibility, along with advanced features such as vMotion and high availability, making its virtualization capabilities widely praised.

Room for Improvement: IBM PowerVM could enhance its cloud integration, pricing structure, and graphical user interface for easier management. Users express concerns over costs and request more transparency. VMware vSphere could improve its complex licensing process, streamline its GUI, and work on reducing costs. Users suggest better clarity in fault tolerance features and some interface improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM PowerVM is preferred for on-premises deployments and is rated highly for its proactive technical support, with users praising IBM's quick response and in-depth support. VMware vSphere is versatile across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, with technical support described as satisfactory but not exceptional in all regions.

Pricing and ROI: IBM PowerVM carries a higher cost, but users see value due to its features without extra licensing fees, making the ROI beneficial, especially with large database systems. VMware vSphere is considered more expensive with intricate licensing models. Users recognize the high cost but acknowledge the range of features and reliability that justify the investment in large enterprise settings.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM PowerVM vs. VMware vSphere Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

IBM PowerVM vs. VMware vSphere

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM PowerVM

Ranking in Server Virtualization Software

10th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware vSphere

Ranking in Server Virtualization Software

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

449

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of IBM PowerVM is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 19.8%, up from 18.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Virtualization Software

Featured Reviews

Atif Najam

Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

Oct 18, 2022

A stable system for high-end data processing with a great support structure

The only problem with the IBM system is improving its hardware licensing model. For example, when you procure a server with 40 physical codes, you must also procure licenses to activate the codes. In Dell or any system, you procure the hardware and have the full right to use the hardware. For IBM, it's different because when you procure a 40-code processor and have 40 physical codes, you only have a license to use 20. As a result, the 20 alert codes will always be in activated mode. Hence, the hardware licensing model could be improved because the licensing model is a bit different from the standard hardware procured.

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Vikas Dhumale

DevOps Engineer at Simple Logic IT Private Limited

Mar 18, 2024

Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems

Speaking about the application deployment process, I work at the L1 level in my company. In my company, the L3 is a different department that manages the application deployment process, and most of them go for tools apart from the ones under VMware to manage the VMs. I am only creating new VMs and assigning RAM space, and if something comes up, then I create new RHEL-based systems. When it comes to the application deployment process, my company manually deploys the applications. For automation purposes, our company uses Jenkins to collect the logs and provide a GUI with the help of a username and password to the end user, after which they can collect the logs from Jenkins. I work at an L1 level in my company. The integrations and infrastructure-related areas of the product are managed by another team in my company. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. Nowadays, people don't prefer to go for cloud-based solutions. Most of the companies prefer VMware as they want some level of security in the environment. VMware allows users to have in-house products. Most companies or banks are not moving over to cloud-based tools. VMware is used in banking systems. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Technical support is great."

"IBM technical support is always good and quick."

"The practicality of IBM PowerVM is a crucial feature, especially with the help of HMC (Hardware Management Console). The Live Partition Mobility help us handle virtual adapters effectively when we need to upgrade firmware or the system, and LPM helps us transfer workloads with minimal downtime. This feature ensures that our systems remain online during maintenance, significantly minimizing potential disruptions."

"It offers stability, resilience, and reliability. They handle the workloads very easily."

"A valuable feature of PowerVM is a feature that is used for higher availability plus stream for posting, which is very useful. There's a flash copy feature which we are using. PowerVM itself, I know, helps us to control and manage our Oracle licensing compliance, since it is our hardware partitioning. This is very important. If you use VMware, there will be a licensing issue. This PowerVM is a hardware partitioner, which is very important for license compliance. We are happy with this solution."

"The feature that I like most is the versatility."

"The most valuable feature of PowerVM is the dynamic allocation of resources."

"PowerVM is perhaps the only virtualization platform that offers 99.999% availability."

More IBM PowerVM pros

"Valuable features really depend on different projects. We are using the traditional infrastructure based on VMware vSphere. We are also using the high availability (HA) and Distributed Switch features to extend our network and switch between different hosts. The VMotion and SVMotion features are very essential for us to relocate the storage of virtual machines to different storage or vSANs. We are using VMotion and SVMotion features several times of the day. We are also using another VMware product to replicate a lot of solutions to a second replication site."

"There are no issues with the level of scalability you can achieve."

"It's not a particular feature, really, however, I can say that the solution is just easy to maintain, and makes it easy to backup all those VMs. We can easily save our data and we can deploy VM machines very fast and create the delivery of the server in a pretty simple, dynamic way."

"The ease of movement of these machines is the most valuable. It is very easy to move these machines between physical hosts. The fast deployment of services is another valuable feature."

"The most valuable feature would be enhanced, what we call, Linked Mode to link our disaster recovery site to our primary site across different vCenters, without being required to be broken apart. Meaning, we have identity management and the actual vCenter servers split. We can actually do embedded now, thanks to vSphere 6.7."

"It's easy to use."

"I don't see any challenges in using this product."

"The most valuable features are the resilience of the solution and vMotion."

More VMware vSphere pros

Cons

"IBM PowerVM does not integrate with Microsoft."

"To make it a ten, I would like for them to add automation and configuration tools in order to help use the manager."

"Technical support could be improved."

"This solution is lacking the ability to have servers act as a cluster, such as in VMware. IBM has come out with a feature similar to VMware's vCenter but it is not as mature. They need to add LPM shared-nothing feature, such as in vMotion."

"The licensing could be better."

"I don't know whether this has been trialed already, but IBM should give us an alert when we reach seven or eight failovers so that we can automatically switch it to manual mode. That would be great because if we cross the 10-day licensing limit, we have to pay a hefty license cost to Oracle. If IBM could view that feature, it would be helpful in license compliance."

"The solution is quite pricey."

"The hardware licensing model could be improved because the licensing model is a bit different from the standard hardware procured."

More IBM PowerVM cons

"The management could be simplified for base-level customers, but of course, it would be difficult to match all customer needs."

"Its price could be better. It is expensive, and its price is a big concern."

"I know VMWare has this Operations Manager. I know that it comes at a price because VMWare normally wants to charge for everything in the software. But I'm not seeing all the features of the Operations Manager. I only see a few features. If all the features can be included in one package, that would be good."

"Its cost needs to be improved. It is very expensive as compared to other solutions."

"I would like having something that works on a smaller screen, so we can get to it on our iPads and have it more touch-centric versus having to sit at a laptop."

"Without a lot of physical RAM on the hardware, it's not very effective. The stability could be improved in cases like this."

"Not having to buy something from a third-party to scan the actual hardware components, like the hard drives and the port containers and fan speeds; not having to bolt something on and go through another vendor, would be helpful."

"These days we have an environment where we are often using clouds as well. A solution that would be a little more cloud-aware would be really helpful. I know there is a product from VMware that is more specifically for the cloud, but it would be nice if VMware Cloud Manager would be cloud-aware. It would simplify certain processes."

More VMware vSphere cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have to purchase the product's licenses."

"The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive."

"Even if the product is expensive, it works well in the long term. The tool is more or less expensive, and I would presently describe it as an optimally priced product."

"The price varies from case to case and you have to negotiate it for every project."

"IBM PowerVM's pricing is cheap."

"IBM PowerVM costs more than other products but the customer does not need to pay additional money for the licenses. In VMware, you need to license everything. With IBM PowerVM it is unlimited and all-inclusive in the price you pay."

"The license cost is bundled with IBM Power Systems as it is limited to RISC-based IBM systems only."

"The pricing for PowerVM is on the higher. Regarding the license, it can be on a monthly or annual basis, depending on the deal. Customers may choose to pay annually, one-time, or monthly based on their agreement with the sales team. As for additional costs, customers need to pay for support if they opt for it. If not, they only pay for the hardware cost as per the agreement."

More IBM PowerVM pricing and cost advice

"It is expensive."

"I find it highly expensive."

"The price could always be lower, but I think it's fair."

"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."

"There is an average performance boost, especially if you use VM encryption inside the VMware with another product, like McAfee. You will see great improvement in these cases."

"I'm not a pricing or budgeting person, but I know that its price is a little bit high, and they can consider reviewing it. Its price is probably the highest in this domain."

"My advice when it comes to pricing is that pricing is a bummer, especially when it comes to SnS coverage."

"Our ROI is time management savings."

More VMware vSphere pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user234735

Technology Consultant, ASEAN at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

May 10, 2015

Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5

I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM PowerVM?

Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM PowerVM?

PowerVM is expensive but worth the investment for the reliability and performance it offers.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM PowerVM?

Currently, all the necessary features are working fine for us. However, technical support could be improved, especially when seeking solutions to issues.

See all answers

What is IOMMU?

DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...

See all answers

Why KVM??? Help please!

We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.

See all answers

What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...

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Comparisons

KVM vs IBM PowerVM

Compared 12% of the time

Hyper-V vs IBM PowerVM

Compared 8% of the time

Proxmox VE vs IBM PowerVM

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs IBM PowerVM

Compared 4% of the time

Oracle VM VirtualBox vs IBM PowerVM

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM PowerVM Competitors

Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere

Compared 24% of the time

Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 13% of the time

RHEV vs VMware vSphere

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSphere

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware vSphere Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM PowerVM

November 2024

Download IBM PowerVM product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSphere

October 2024

Download VMware vSphere product report

Also Known As

PowerVM

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IBM

VMware

Overview

Power is server virtualization without limits. Businesses are turning to PowerVM server virtualization to consolidate multiple workloads onto fewer systems, increasing server utilization and reducing cost. PowerVM provides a secure and scalable server virtualization environment for AIX, IBM i and Linux applications built upon the advanced RAS features and leading performance of the Power Systems platform.

VMware vSphere is a powerful and complete server virtualization platform that allows its users to create and manage virtual data centers and machines. VMware vSphere is designed to help IT departments set up and run applications using the most cost-effective computer resources. By using vSphere, organizations save the time and energy necessary for purchasing infrastructure and software and reduce ongoing maintenance and operational burdens on IT teams.

Infrastructure administrators and network operators can access and manage the vSphere server by using a web-based cross-platform client application or via the vSphere client tool provided with vSphere.

VMware vSphere provides visibility into VMs and enables its users to carry out operations to manage VMs. This includes tasks such as:

Powering VMs on and off
Launching the VM console
Shutting down guest operating systems
Settings configurations
Taking system snapshots

VMware vSphere Benefits

Some of the benefits of using VMware vSphere include:

Reduced costs: Since VMware applications are run on a server, it is not necessary to spend large amounts of your organization’s money on hardware, software, and infrastructure.

Increased productivity and customer satisfaction: VMware is able to operate multiple complex processes simultaneously. With all your applications being managed and run on the cloud, downtime, failures, and application errors are rare. VMware easily scales up and down to meet your computing needs. The high availability that VMware provides allows your IT staff to focus on other issues and keeps your customers satisfied with the service they receive.

Unlimited access to your VMs: VMware’s user-friendly cloud-based interface allows any employee to work from any location at any time.

Enhanced security: VMware’s security tools deliver full visibility into your entire system. This keeps your applications and data more secure, in any type of environment. VMware provides multiple protective tools including antiviruses and anti-malware, as well as backup and recovery services.

VMware vSphere Features

Below is a list of some of VMware vSphere’s key features:

Transferable virtual machine images: Export and import virtual machine images from your local environment. This gives users the ability to set up and configure their systems locally and only upload them to the server once everything is working properly. VM images can be moved back and forth between vendors, ensuring that your company is never tied up to a specific cloud vendor.

User-friendly interface: Using VMware’s intuitive console, you can easily create, manage, share, and deploy virtual machines.

API integration: VMware’s APIs support integration with third-party applications for data protection, multipathing, and disk array solutions.

Distributed power management: Automate efficiency by continuously optimizing server power consumption within each cluster.

Reviews from Real Users

VMware vSphere stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. A few major ones are its virtualization abilities, its flexibility and availability, and its user-friendly interface.

Felix D., an Automation project administrator, DCS, I&E at Centennial Cayman Corp, writes, “The connectivity is fantastic, and many functions can run together in one server. If you need to scale, we can continue to add components or modules. It's a beautiful virtual solution that has many advantages over physical hardware, where you have to use devices and wiring to connect all your projects.”

Sample Customers

Sto, Soitec, SNO, Bundesrechenzentrum GmbH, Al Mansour Holding, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Huhtamaki, ELK Group, IT-Informatik, Arkansas Tech University, Pneuhage

Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.

Buyer's Guide

IBM PowerVM vs. VMware vSphere

October 2024

Free Report: IBM PowerVM vs. VMware vSphere

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