SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware vSphere comparison

The compared SolarWinds and VMware solutions aren't in the same category. SolarWinds is ranked #7 in VM , with an average rating of 6.0, and holds a 10.0% mindshare in the category. VMware is ranked #2 in SVS , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 19.6% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and VMware vSphere based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about VMware, Nutanix, IBM and others in Virtualization Management Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Virtualization Management Tools Report (Updated: December 2024).

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Virtualization Management Tools

December 2024

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IBM Turbonomic

Mindshare comparison

Virtualization Management Tools

Server Virtualization Software

Featured Reviews

SubashSubbiah

Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

It can tell us where performance is lagging on the hardware layer, but the reporting on the application layer is lacking

The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer. I would like them to add some apps for physical device load resourcing and physical-to-virtual calculation. It gives excellent recommendations for the virtual layer but doesn't have the capabilities for physical-to-virtual analysis. Automated deployment is something else they could add. Some built-in automation features are helpful, but we aren't effectively using a few. We want a few more automated features, like autoscaling and automatic performance optimization testing would be useful.

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Wapelo Zaphaniah

Information Technology Administrator at Debswana

A tool with an easy initial setup phase and high scalability that needs to improve its pricing and include reporting features

The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing. The solution can be made free, especially for those who are using Dell products. The monitoring part is taken care of after SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is integrated into Dell IDRAC. If the aforementioned integration is not carried out, then you have to pay money separately to receive or utilize the services from SolarWinds. In the future, the product should have reporting features. The reporting feature would allow users to get whatever information they are looking for rather than having to do it manually.

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Vikas Dhumale

DevOps Engineer at Simple Logic IT Private Limited

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

"With Turbonomic, we were able to reduce our ESX cluster size and save money on our maintenance and license renewals. It saved us around $75,000 per year but it's a one-time reduction in VMware licensing. We don't renew the support. The ongoing savings is probably $50,000 to $75,000 a year, but there was a one-time of $200,000 plus."

"My favorite part of the solution is the automation scheduling. Being able to choose when actions happen, and how they happen..."

"Using this product helps us to reduce performance risk because it shows us where resources are needed but not yet allocated."

"We have seen a 30% performance improvement overall."

"It has automated a lot of things. We have saved 30 to 35 percent in human resource time and cost, which is pretty substantial. We don't have a big workforce here, so we have to use all the automation we can get."

"Turbonomic has helped optimize cloud operations and reduced our cloud costs significantly. Overall, we are at about 40 percent savings, and we spend about three million a year just in Azure. It reduces the size of the VMs, putting them into the right template for usage. People don't realize that you don't have to future-proof a virtual machine in Azure. You just need to build it for today. As the business or service grows, you can scale up or out. About 90 percent of all the costs that we've reduced has been from sizing machines appropriately."

"The system automatically sizes and moves resources based on the needs of the applications."

"I have the ability to automate things similar to the Orchestrator stuff. I do have the ability to have it do some balancing, and if it sees some different performance metrics that I've set not being met, it'll actually move some of my virtual machines from, let's say, one host to another. It is sort of an automation tool that helps me. Basically, I specify the metric, and if I get a certain host or something being over-utilized, it'll automatically move the virtual machines around for me. It basically has to snap into my vCenter and then it can make adjustments and move my virtual machines around. It also has some very nice reporting tools built around virtual machines. It tells you how much storage, memory, or CPU is being used monthly, and then it gives you a very nice way to be able to send out billing structure to your end users who use servers within your environment."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."

"The fact that we have the ability to easily scale out, and the ability to do maintenance on the underlying hardware without impacting our business applications, are important aspects."

"The features that I have found most valuable are the overall good ease of use and the good interface which makes it very easy to migrate from one bare metal to another. These are the two things which I like about it."

"The tool provides 99.99% uptime."

"Our customers opt for virtualization because it's cheaper and better than non-virtualized solutions. VMware is probably the best on the market now."

"I like the capability of vMotion, DRS, high availability, and resource distribution."

"Using vSphere we have virtualized over one thousand servers and this gave us management, cost and datacenter space advantages."

"In the past, we struggled with VM encryption. We couldn't encrypt the virtual machines with older versions of vSphere without some kind of third-party tool. Now, with 6.7, it's all in the application itself, in vSphere. We no longer have to procure additional products to meet that requirement. We can just do it on the fly, and pass our audit with no issues."

"The solution is user-friendly. It is easy to convert, create, and manage systems."

More VMware vSphere pros

Cons

"I would like Turbonomic to add more services, especially in the cloud area. I have already told them this. They can add Azure NetApp Files. They can add Azure Blob storage. They have already added Azure App service, but they can do more."

"The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer."

"There is room for improvement [with] upgrades. We have deployed the newer version, version 8 of Turbonomic. The problem is that there is no way to upgrade between major Turbonomic versions. You can upgrade minor versions without a problem, but when you go from version 6 to version 7, or version 7 to version 8, you basically have to deploy it new and let it start gathering data again. That is a problem because all of the data, all of the savings calculations that had been done on the old version, are gone. There's no way to keep track of your lifetime savings across versions."

"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."

"After running this solution in production for a year, we may want a more granular approach to how we utilize the product because we are planning to use some of its metrics to feed into our financial system."

"Enhanced executive reporting standard with the tool beyond the reports that can be created today. Something that can easily be used with upper management on a monthly or quarterly basis to show the impact to our environment."

"Remove the need for special in-house knowledge and development."

"The one point is the reporting. We do have reports out of it, but they're not the level of graphical detail I would like."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."

"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."

"In the last couple of years, the breaking apart of specific added benefits and charging license upcharges for them. That would be the only negative thing that I have to say: As a large consumer of the Hypervisor, we have a hard time justifying the cost of utilizing the extra products, especially when it's a couple of grand here and there, a couple of hundred dollars here and there. It's hard for an IT administrator or an architect to sell to upper management. When they're seeing so much ROI from the Hypervisor, it's hard to show them that there is extra value in the additional products that can be tied on top."

"As we introduce the DevOps culture, we need to make sure that the principles and tools used to support this approach can be easily integrated and interoperated with the vSphere environment with no (or less) redundancy in tools and functionality."

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

"I'm using vSphere at a high level. Sometimes, I find it challenging to integrate different networks, but I think it's just my lack of knowledge."

"Higher cost than other similar solutions."

"The technical support is not too bad, but not the best."

"I would like to see improvements in simplifying automation, cloud native deployment, administration, and fault resolution."

"Technical support is not that great. It is too slow."

More VMware vSphere cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."

"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."

"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."

"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."

"I don't know the current prices, but I like how the licensing is based on the number of instances instead of sockets, clusters, or cores. We have some VMs that are so heavy I can only fit four on one server. It's not cost-effective if we have to pay more for those. When I move around a VM SQL box with 30 cores and a half-terabyte of RAM, I'm not paying for an entire socket and cores where people assume you have at least 10 or 20 VMs on that socket for that pricing."

"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."

"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."

"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."

"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."

"If you go with a standard license, it's very affordable."

"I'm satisfied with the VMware vSphere price. They have a bundle that is priced well. However, any advantage feature is very costly."

"It is expensive."

"I rate the solution's pricing a ten out of ten due to the recent price changes."

"In my opinion, the essential version is a good price."

"The product is expensive."

"I find it highly expensive."

"Pricing is insanely expensive."

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

30%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?

It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...

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What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

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What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...

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What do you like most about SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing. The solution can be made free, especially for those ...

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 platfor...

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...

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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 interfa...

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Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 19% of the time

Azure Cost Management vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 8% of the time

Cloudability vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 6% of the time

CloudBolt vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Turbonomic Competitors

VMware Aria Operations vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 62% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 21% of the time

More SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Competitors

Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere

Compared 25% of the time

Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 13% of the time

RHEV vs VMware vSphere

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs VMware vSphere

Compared 1% of the time

More VMware vSphere Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

December 2024

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Buyer's Guide

Virtualization Management Tools

December 2024

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager report

Download SolarWinds Virtualization Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSphere

November 2024

Download VMware vSphere product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

SolarWinds VMAN

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VMware

Overview

IBM Turbonomic is a performance and cost optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds used by companies to assure application performance while eliminating inefficiencies by dynamically resourcing applications through automated actions.

IBM Turbonomic leverages AI to continuously analyze application resource consumption, deliver insights and dashboards, and make real-time adjustments. Common use cases include cloud cost optimization, cloud migration planning, data center modernization, FinOps acceleration, Kubernetes optimization, sustainable IT, and application resource management. By integrating with various cloud platforms, on-premise infrastructures, and containers, IBM Turbonomic provides a holistic view of the environment, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

The solution is designed to support complex IT environments, offering actionable insights and automated actions that help IT teams proactively manage application performance and infrastructure resources. Turbonomic customers report an average 33% reduction in cloud and infrastructure waste without impacting application performance, and return-on-investment of 471% over three years.

IBM Turbonomic manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers to ensure efficiency and financial impact awareness. It automates resource allocation, balances memory dynamically, and provides robust performance metrics. Users benefit from its ability to prevent resource starvation and offer cost-saving recommendations through continuous management. Executive Dashboards provide insights for cost justification and resource management, making IT operations simpler with AI-driven automation and actionable recommendations.

What are the most important features of IBM Turbonomic?

Automated Resource Allocation: Dynamically allocates resources for optimal performance.
Dynamic Memory Balancing: Adjusts memory allocation to prevent resource shortages.
Right-Sizing: Sizes VMs accurately for Azure and on-prem environments.
Single Platform Management: Manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers.
Proactive Performance Optimization: Continuously optimizes performance to prevent issues.
Kubernetes Support: Enhances container management with robust support.
Cost-Saving Recommendations: Provides actionable tips for reducing expenses.

What benefits should users look for in IBM Turbonomic reviews?

Cost Reduction: Helps minimize expenses through efficient resource management.
Performance Improvement: Enhances application performance by preventing resource starvation.
Detailed Insights: Offers comprehensive analytics to justify costs and resource utilization.
Simplified IT Processes: Uses AI automation to streamline operations.

IBM Turbonomic is implemented across multiple industries, including finance for optimizing peak payroll processing, IT for enhanced virtual server management, and healthcare for reliable performance monitoring. Organizations benefit from its robust automation, ensuring maximum efficiency and cost savings.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager reduces downtime by 53% and time spent troubleshooting by 59%. Analyze and remediate VM performance problems by viewing active, critical, and warning issues in your environment.

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

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

Elliot Health System

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

Buyer's Guide

Virtualization Management Tools

December 2024

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