IBM Power Systems Reviews

The solution's most valuable features are speed and capacity on demand. It works faster than Intel Power Processor.

They should improve the solution's pricing. Also, they should provide proper documentation to understand the setup process.

I have been using the solution for more than two years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a very scalable solution as it has capacity on demand. We can activate many features depending on the business requirements.

The solution’s technical support team is good.

I have worked with Lenovo Server, HP Server, Dell Server, and SolarWinds earlier.

The solution’s initial setup was complex.

The solution's native server is not much expensive. But, the additional software required for visualization and data protection is highly-priced.

The solution is suitable for prevention and maintenance. If you have the budget and a knowledgeable executive to manage the system, you should buy IBM Power Systems. I rate it a nine out of ten for its availability and visibility.

I primarily use Power Systems for high availability and security.

Power Systems' best features include its user-friendliness and self-checking/self-healing abilities. It's also the best solution for MIMIX and high availability.

Power Systems' price could always be lower.

I've been working with Power Systems for over thirty years.

Power Systems is totally stable.

Power Systems is very scalable.

IBM's tech support is one of Power Systems' best features.

The initial setup is very easy - you just power it on, and it's ready to work in an hour.

Power Systems is very cheap and provides good value for money.

I would 100% recommend Power Systems to other users and would rate it ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for its use as a bank and commercial solution. We use it for core banking and for day-to-day work on the DBA, the database.

The performance is the solution's most valuable asset. It has one of the highest levels of performance I have ever seen. It's quite remarkable, in that sense.

The memory is great. We can have a huge amount of memory. However, the main reason to work with the solution is the performance, since inter-servers cannot be compared with the cores of both systems.

The PowerVC make it so simple since we can deal with it just like VMware, just like virtual machines, and it's really simple.

The solution is currently working on the old PowerVCs. We welcome this improvement.

It would be ideal if the solution was more simple to work with. 

The initial setup is difficult.

I've been dealing with the solution for about two years now.

I haven't found the solution to have any stability problems. I don't think I can recall dealing with bugs or glitches that disrupted our work. The system doesn't freeze or crash. It's quite reliable and offers great performance.

Scaling the solution is possible and would be quite easy. Companies that need to scale up can do so with this IBM product.

We've had to reach out to technical support in the past. The level of service they offer has been quite good. We've been very happy with them so far.

The initial setup is not straightforward. It's quite complex, especially for those implementing it for the first time. While it will never be simple, per se, it does get easier the more setups you end up performing.

A non-tech person would simply not be able to handle the implementation. You will need someone that's knowledgable.

Not just the implementation, but the registration, and many other parts of the deployment take a rather long time. It's not a quick process. If we're just talking about the installation with servers, you are looking at four or five days right there. However, if you factor in migration or other administrations, you are looking at a one to three-month deployment timeframe.

We're partners. We have a business relationship with IBM.

I'd advise others considering the product that, while it is pricy, you can't beat the performance you get on it.

I'd recommend the solution for big databases and high-performance applications.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it wasn't so complex, I'd give the solution higher marks. Most people nowadays look for simplicity and they want to have non-technical people deal with everything, just like a cloud solution. However, you need someone specialized in order to handle it.

While the solution is quite expensive, the level of service provided is second to none. It makes it worth the price.

We tend to use the on-premises deployment model as cloud versions are not very popular in Jordan.

We primarily sell the solution to clients.

I just like the levels of redundancy that are there. Your power's redundant, your pathing's redundant. You can split up your buses, split up your expansion units. It's hard to take those boxes down, really. So, if they are up they'll run for years.

One other thing I really like is how they are going to integrate the HMCs into the frames now, so you don't have a standalone appliance, it's just built into the frame. I haven't worked with anything like that yet but hopefully soon.

One of the big things I've seen is that you can dynamically move devices or processor memory, capacity on demand, things like that. We actually just used the CUoD feature this past year. We enabled four more cores on our server. It kinda got us out of a gray spot.

For me, as an AS/400 I series guy, I think there's a lot of benefits to that OS. I think a lot of users really like it, despite the green screens. But after you get working with it, you're very familiar with it. So, to me, the hardware's there and I think the AS/400 or iSeries OS is very good as well.

I would like for there to be more clarity around the licensing. You'll get your PVUs and CPWs and some apps are licensed on one, some are on another.

That box has probably been running for us for over 10 years. I've been working with Power directly for over five years.

I primarily work with Power 570, and so we're running some of our AS/400 on it with IBM i. We are also running POWER8 in the right spots in our environment. I'm kind of known as the legacy track but I'm glad to have the 570 anyway.

The stability is beyond belief. You can't beat it. 

We experience issues every once in a while. I think it's more due to our applications and how we're licensed that sometimes we have to get a little crafty there.

They're very strong. And especially the FSRs that come out. Those guys have been working with Power boxes for decades.

No, we are pretty set with IBM Power. We're running AIX and SAP all on Power boxes.

I definitely see IBM as a market leader in the server industry in regards to their hardware. There is a lot of talk about them going more open-source and I think they are there, running Linux on Power and being more actively involved with that user group. But that's maybe a catch-22 as well, but I think they are leveraging that and that is what is going to take them forward.

The reliability is the main thing. Reliability and ease of use. The cost of ownership is down too.

It runs all our enterprise systems and because of the reliability, we don't have the same issue with downtime and unexpected downtime that other companies may have. I have been there for 10 years, running the Power, and we've had three unexpected experiences of downtime in 10 years.

We just want to see continued reliability and performance. And continued value for the price. The licensing could be simplified.

I have been using Power for 10 years. I have POWER7 and POWER8 and I use them for IBM i. We also have an 822L and Linux Red Hat. We started using Power on Linux a few months ago. We moved to it mainly because of the reliability.

It's got all the scalability I need. I can add on to to the box that I've got. Scale it out from where I'm at.

I have not had any problems with technical support. They have all done well every time I have needed them.

We were using Power5.

It was pretty straightforward. I have been doing this a long time, so it is pretty straightforward for me. There are more hardware things now that I've moved to external storage. It does become a little more complex there.

The licensing has improved over the years. I've been working with IBM for 30-plus years. The licenses have gotten better. We are experiencing some issues with Linux licensing between the different flavors, between Ubuntu and Red Hat, and which license you need for which machine, so that's getting to become a little complex.

No.

The OpenPOWER Foundation has brought many advantages. There are a lot more things available now, carried over from other industries.

I personally do consider IBM to be a market leader in servers. In order to maintain that position they just need to continue the performance and the reliability.

It's flexible and it's reliable.

They can make it easier to do the patching and iFixes, which is especially important now, with all of the security issues. That would provide a lot of relief.

I recently joined the team, but I think they started moving to Power about a year ago, at least.

We are very happy with Power's performance.

No, absolutely not. Especially now, with the VC, it's even more flexible with the chance to create an environment in a few minutes, especially for testing.

Pretty good. We had a few engagements with the labs.

We have always used Power.

Thanks to the labs, the migration from POWER7 to POWER8 was easy.

We were able to reduce to a single frame.

I don't really wish the licensing was more cloud-based. It is not really an issue. It could be.

I'm using POWER8 right now and migrating some of the POWER7 systems. I am using it with AIX and IBM i. Mostly the core is IBM i. We have an e-commerce website and it is running on AIX.

I don't know how IBM could maintain their status as a market leader in the servers sector, but I would like to see more young people at this kind of event, the IBM Power Conference. That would probably help.

I can get more work done with less hardware. The SMT that they've improved has really helped open up boundaries for other applications that can use it. The ones that can't, they're still single-threaded, still waiting on the CPU cycle.

When using it with the virtualization, we've finally gotten to the point of being able to do what VMware VirtualCenter does, but we do it more robustly, a lot faster and probably easier.

I don't know yet. We have got scalability, resiliency. We can move it from one system to another.

Licensing is always going to be a problem, because it used to be based on, "This is a CPU, this is the memory, this is your footprint." Now, with virtualization, that one CPU can be carved up 100 different ways, so why should I be charged for that use rather than a single CPU, a single socket? But businesses have to make money.

I have been using Power for maybe 15 years; POWER8 since it came out, a couple of years ago.

No we haven't. We pushed it as far as it could go. There have been times I've put maybe 60, 70 machines on a single POWER8 box which, with the poll sharing and the resource sharing, you can do but you have to actually plan it out accordingly.

It's like any other support organization. You can get some top-notch people, and then you can get some who you have to escalate. If you don't escalate, you're not going to get the support that you need. But overall, response has been pretty good.

Intel was the previous solution. The performance wasn't there. Linux on Power, I believe they're one of the first implementers on it. I think that was under POWER4, when no one knew anything about it. But it worked, worked beautifully. The hard part was I couldn't move that workload from one machine to another because it wasn't available. But it's a lot more robust now.

With Intel, it's a matter of complicated instruction set versus reduced. Using Power we get more scalability, more power, less need for resources, hardware, etc.

It's not as easy as clicking boxes and setting up Windows. You have to actually do a lot of pre-planning, a lot of figuring out whats your workload is, what your footprint is, your memory size.

You can get a person who has never seen it before to be able to do it themselves. With the cloud offering, it's point and click, literally. The resources are there. They tell it what they want, where they want it, how much they want, and click, they have a machine.

I mostly use AIX along with some Linux, POWER8 and POWER7.

It's hard to say how the Power system uniquely positions our company in the industry because we try to do everything. But we usually try to push the Power first. Our company mainly started with strictly iSeries, so you can't run that on Intel. So when Power came out and showed that it was a much better workhorse for the iSeries, it was good. Life was great. Actually, I believe iSeries was virtualizing long before Intel even thought about it. But some of the iSeries guys will tell you, "We don't know what it is."

Regarding the OpenPOWER Foundation, it has offered us a faster way of deploying multiple systems in a shorter amount of time. In the good old days, it would take you a few days just to create one system. Nowadays, you can possibly deploy 10 in the time it would take one.

I consider IBM a market leader in the server sector, compared to Dell and Lenova, because, they have more robust, faster hardware that can be deployed and implemented a lot faster than Intel, even with VMware.

VMware has point and click, but there's a real steep learning curve in your networking, your shared resources, your performance tuning and your troubleshooting.

In order to remain a market leader I would say that IBM needs to stay ahead of the curve. They need to listen to what their customers are saying as far as, "I want this feature or that feature." If it can be done, do it. If it can't, let the customer know. "Hey, we'll look at it and get it in the future."

I would definitely recommend Linux on Power rather than Intel.

I am happy with the performance. Now that we are moving to Linux on Power, I'm really surprised at how fast it is, compared to AIX, seeing them side by side. Linux doesn't have all of the wrapping around it that AIX does to provide various security measures and things of that nature, so it can run much faster.

The improvements that I would like to see are probably the same as what everyone else wants, more speed, less electricity and less HVAC required to run it.

We have been using POWER8 since it came out in 2014. We are using POWER8 and POWER7. We are really off of six at this point. I am just waiting for POWER9 now.

Well, from what I have done with it, it's pretty nice and very easy to do all that.

Excellent, really excellent. They try really hard to make sure the tech guys who are going to do the service and support are brought up to speed before it goes out and hits the market. Although they can only go so far with that and some things just have to be learned once it's out in the field, it's pretty impressive how ready they are when it hits the market.

Upgrading the hardware from one version to another was pretty simple but the software, not so much.

This doesn't really apply to me, but I certainly think the customers are seeing ROI in their move from seven to eight. I don't know anybody who moved to eight and said, "Darn, I wish I had stuck with seven." They seem to be pretty happy and that's usually the best measure, right?

I didn't get to choose, it's the platform that I was given to work on. But if I had to choose, I'd probably choose Power anyway. I like that it's not Intel because we have a monoculture in CPU's.

We are on AIX and we're starting to move to Power Linux. That's new for us this year. It's marketing requirements. The customers are voting, they are requesting it.

The UNIX market, in general, is shrinking and Linux is not considered UNIX. I'm not sure it's so similar, but it's a different kernel. They don't want to go to Windows either, so you're running out of choices so they move to Linux. If we want to stay viable, we have to do that as well. 

AIX will always have a spot. If you look at the history of all the problems with these platforms, Linux, in its young life, already has way more than AIX. If that's your thing, if you want it to be rock solid, then you are going to stick with AIX forever, as long as you possibly can. But a lot of people are making the jump, a jump into Linux. We are jumping too.

The Open Power Foundation has brought about advances by introducing new ideas. As I mentioned earlier with the monoculture thing, you get the same group of people who work on these things forever and they are really smart, they get out and they read books, and they get all the information they can, but you really need that stimulus from outside. You need to come to conferences, you need to get around and involved with more people. That is why Opensource works so well. It's the same idea. You need that diversity of opinion and thought to really get the best out of it. I think if we are going to see really big leaps forward on the Power platform, it's going to come from that.

I definitely think that IBM is a market leader in the server sector. I think what they need to do is stick with the open approach that they have adopted over the years. That is really the only way that works anymore. I think the days of enterprise companies being completely closed are just about gone and I'm glad they are. You just get so much better work out of the community.