IBM PowerVM Reviews

IBM PowerVM is a stable operating system, and we haven't experienced any performance impact in AIX. It is very reliable. Currently, the main purpose for using it is customer migration to Linux or server consolidation based on their requirements. The market is changing with more customers shifting towards Linux.

Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM.       

As I understand it, IBM sells all its hardware to Lenovo, and only PCs servers are managed by IBM. It's uncertain how much longer IBM will continue in this way, especially with the current trend of transitioning from on-premises to cloud and hybrid models. The market is evolving.

Given this market shift, it's essential to identify areas for improvement. IBM has introduced the PowerVM Series, including Linux, which is a positive step. However, customers are already moving towards x86 servers due to cost considerations. The cost of PowerVM compared to x86 servers appears to be a significant factor.

I have been using IBM PowerVM for 8 years.

I would rate the stability of IBM PowerVM at eight out of ten, which means that it is very stable.

We work with clients ranging from small businesses to enterprises, primarily focusing on enterprise-level solutions. Regarding scalability, PowerVM's scalability is global and depends on the resources you add. You can extend it with additional boxes based on your requirements, but scalability is influenced by the type of server purchased. If you have a basic model, scalability might be limited. It depends on the investment made.

The support is satisfactory, but there are instances where the IBM team doesn't provide a solution. Additionally, in cases where customers have purchased hardware without a support subscription, there can be challenges, and engineers may direct to Google searches to address issues. Improvement in support is needed.

Neutral

PowerVM was the initial virtualization solution through Power BI, followed by VMware leading in virtualization. However, if you acquire a high-performance version of VMware and carefully configure CPU utilization, it can be comparable to PowerVM. Many customers are shifting to Linux with VMware.

There is a scarcity of engineers in the market with expertise in PowerVM servers. Finding skilled technical personnel is challenging, and there is a noticeable shift of interest from AIX to Linux among professionals, which makes the deployment difficult. 

The installation and configuration time vary based on the setup, ranging from one to two days for a single server to a week for more complex scenarios involving clusters or VM deployments.

Regarding maintenance, it depends on the availability of parts and skilled engineers. Finding suitable engineers in the market is difficult, and IBM may outsource maintenance tasks.

The pricing for PowerVM is on the higher side. 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.

PowerVM currently only supports AIX and IBM Power Linux, excluding normal Linux. This could be improved to prevent customers from migrating to other systems.

I use the product for partitioning. My clients use it on different operating systems like Linux. 

The tool's most valuable feature is administration. 

The solution's interface needs to be integrated with messaging analysis. 

I have been using the tool for many years. 

IBM PowerVM's stability is very good.

My company has around 1,000 users for the tool. 

IBM PowerVM's customer service is good. 

Positive

IBM PowerVM's deployment is easy and takes two hours to complete if you plan the numbers and partition. Sometimes, we need to make upgrades. However, it's not a big deal. The public information and the use of IBM resources are enough for us.

IBM PowerVM's pricing is cheap. 

My customers are happy to buy the product since they have a stable system. I rate the overall product a ten out of ten. 

The clients use it as a backup system for high availability and disaster recovery.

It is a reliable system with 99.9% uptime. The live operational ability is there. 

Nothing, it’s almost perfect.

I have been working with this solution for 20 years or so. 

It's a stable product. I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

It's a scalable product. When you need additional processors or disks, you can easily add them and continue to work.

I have one customer using this solution. It's scalable, so you can easily add anything you want. This solution handles large-scale virtual machine deployments and management well.

IBM technical support is always good and quick. We can quickly get a response and solution.

I work on IBM Power Systems, PowerVM, and MIMIX which is high-availability solution. I am not working on Linux, but IBM Power Systems can run Linux.

The initial setup is easy, with a good interface, easy access, and easy configuration.

Very easy setup. In a few minutes, you have a running system. 

It's in a secure place, and users can easily access it. It's much more scalable than a physical system on users' premises because they can easily add disks, memory, and processors. 

Users can safely take the backups, and they have an available system. Users can reach it from anywhere, and it's secure and easily scalable. Administration is easy.

Users can easily add licenses and solutions, and users can select from the administration menu. 

Users can easily select the functions or solutions they want to add and start using them.

Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten. It looks very good now. Users can start using it in a few minutes, so it's very easy to set up and very easy to use. It's secure and scalable. It's a very good choice.

It is hardware-level virtualization. It does not consume anything from the computer resources. It is pretty good and is light. It is not like VMware or Veeam. It doesn't require a lot of resources.

You can increase resources with it automatically. You can start with a very small capacity of the computer itself. You can have shared resources between multiple applications of the same virtual machines. It is like a shared pool between resources. It is not complicated like others on the market. First of all, consolidation, and second, it is efficient in resource utilization. It is a very elastic solution.

IBM PowerVM does not support Microsoft. This is the only constraint. The IBM PowerVM supports the AIX system, which is a Unix system for IBM Unix, but it does not support Microsoft Windows.

I have been working with IBM PowerVM for the past twenty-two years.

It is a very stable system. It is, against ransomware, and I can say virus-free. IBM PowerVMI is very tough to penetrate with any virus, and data can be encrypted. There is a lot of added value, especially with the new IBM Power Systems, which is coming with very high, very good features like AI. It does not require any maintenance. We have not faced any issues because it runs on the hardware level, so if the hardware will fail, the IBM PowerVM will fail. Otherwise, it is a machine up and running.

IBM PowerVM is definitely scalable.

Technical support is very good with IBM PowerVM.

The initial setup of IBM PowerVM is not complex.

It requires some skill, of course, because you need somebody who knows IBM systems. However, it is not complex.

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.

I would rate IBM PowerVM a ten out of ten.

We use IBM PowerVM primarily for creating dynamic partitions. We utilize the same physical machine for multiple partitions, dynamically moving resources between them based on performance needs. We have moved from using HISMB to Oracle RAC.

PowerVM is straightforward and reliable, especially for ARM backup and storage purposes as it allows for efficient database backups.

The most valuable feature of PowerVM is the dynamic allocation of resources. It allows us to move resources on the fly without needing to bounce applications or servers.

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

I have been working with PowerVM for over 20 years.

PowerVM is very stable. I would rate its stability a ten out of ten.

The scalability of PowerVM is excellent. I would rate it above nine out of ten since you can scale on the fly.

Customer support for PowerVM systems is good, yet there is room for improvement regarding TSM support.

Positive

In addition to PowerVM, we use Veeam backup for its user-friendly features, and the ability to cover various platforms, yet Tivoli is more reliable for database backups.

The initial setup is straightforward. With the latest versions, you can create partitions with a single click, unlike older methods that were more complex.

Implementation involves IBM GPM people for new services, and they work with us during the implementation.

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

We integrate with various solutions like Teleo, Salesforce, and others, however, for database and major applications, we rely on IBM solutions.

PowerVM is highly recommended for its performance and reliability, especially for critical systems.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Gatron Industries is rolling out one of the largest Digital Transformation program of the Country and require a platform that can provide industry leading Reliability, Availability and Scalability to host the Critical Tier 1 workloads. A no compromise approach was to be taken to ensure that the platform on which our SAP Landscape is hosted performs consistently. It was also required that the Virtualization technology should perform equally well for both OLTP and OLAP workloads. The platform also required to be flexible and must adapt to the changing workloads.

With IBM PowerVM, both planned and unplanned downtime have reduced drastically. The platform provides peace of mind in terms of performance, reliability and availability. The administrators can spend less time on firefighting and more time of providing other services to improve overall value delivered to the organization

Shared Processer pools and active memory sharing are the features that are the hallmark of PowerVM. 

Shared Processer Pools allows PowerVM to automatically allocate processing power from a shared pool of processors based on the workload requirement. This enables better throughput and balancing of processing power as well as cost savings for processor-based licenses. An lpar can be provided an upper limit restricting lpar not to exceed the configured limit in case additional processing power is required from the shared processing pool. This also helps in restricting lpars from exceeding a certain processor count, especially where the application or workload license is based on processing power also ensuring compliance at all times.

Active Memory Sharing dynamically reallocates memory of running partitions based on changing workload demands. The memory for the pool is carved out from Physical memory and is made logical memory.  The said memory is not available to be assigned to partitions as dedicated memory. A min, max and desired as well as weight is assigned to the memory of each lpar to help hypervisor make a decision in case a condition where priority is to be given to a certain lapr to use the memory form shared pool.

A GUI version of VIOS would be a great plus for people moving from Intel-based hypervisors.

I have been using PowerVM for more than a decade now.

PowerVM is one of the most stable platform in the market. It is the virtualization platform of choice of high performance critical workloads.

One of the main reasons to procure PowerVM is scalability. These systems can scale up as well as scale out depending upon the model you choose. The performance that these systems deliver actually allows you to run much more demanding workloads than on any other intel based platform. We have about 824 users at the moment. We will probably increase usage over the next two years.

IBM technical support is top-notch. I'm very satisfied with them.

The initial setup is a bit complex and takes much longer to implement when compared to VMware and other hypervisors.

IBM smooth start services provides the complete initial setup for PowerVM. The Engineers deputed to implement the solution have very good understanding of the solution and guides the customer in every step of the way.

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

We evaluated VMware, AHV, and Hyper-V, but we chose IBM PowerVM.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM PowerVM an eight.

We're using the solution primarily on power machines and the default specialization software, IVM Power. Our power machines are specifically used to run Oracle databases.

It's flexible to license virtual machines and power them with Oracle. If Oracle can not be virtualized in neutral, they actually say you pay a license for the whole box even if you want just one feature from Oracle. Our machine has got 60 CPUs, and that's just through a virtual machine. If I have an entire box and I put on VMware virtualization, Oracle makes me license the whole box even if my Oracle VM it was maybe just two CPUs out of maybe a box with 16 CPUs. Therefore, power machines seem to be more flexible, which is why we use the power machines for Oracle or Oracle databases.

Currently, it's working fine. It's not really lacking too much in the way of features.

If it could actually virtualize the entire platform it might be better. If you're having more than one virtualization technology, maybe there's a way to actually have less - one technology to run the data center and maybe one special virtualization for power. If it integrated with other platforms more effectively it might be better.

I've been using the solution for a decade. It's been ten years now.

It's easy to actually manage all the hardware for Power VM.

It's scalable. Whenever we buy another product other than hardware, it's easily integrated into the virtualization software that we download. 

We have about 50-75 internal users on the solution currently that handle reports, etc. However, we have a subscriber base of 10 million.

We do plan to increase the usage in the future.

The technical support is okay. They read all of our messages or SMS. We're very satisfied with their level of support and find them knowledgeable and responsive.

We've been using this solution for quite some time now. It's been ten years. 

We've been actually using IBM side by side with Intel machines which are Lenovo and HP. 

For the power machine, the setup is not that complex. We have got 100 percent vendor support. We find that if you buy a new machine, the item vendor actually gives us 100 percent support in setting it up and also in showing us how it is run.

Deployment times depend on when the deployment is done. We're looking at deploying the hardware and then the software. In most cases, it takes about a week or two. It is a maximum of two weeks to set up everything.

The solution is being maintained by a team of 850.

We have support from our vendor that assists us. 

The current Power VM that we have, has an upgrade from a previous solution. The integration was within Power VM itself.

I don't know what the licensing costs are. It's not part of my department.

We're IBM customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

I'd recommend this solution. It's a great product and they offer great support.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company or our banking sectors, so it is used for our banking customers and for their core banking systems. Most of the critical systems use IBM PowerVM.

In terms of the technology used in the product, I feel that there are some areas where improvements are required. The tool should offer better clustering options.

I have been using IBM PowerVM for fifteen years. My company operates as a systems integrator company. My company has a partnership with IBM and VMware.

My company provides technical support, so in terms of IBM PowerVM, we are technically equipped. At the same time, IBM also offers support for PowerVM. The support is easily reachable.

I have worked with VMware. I don't think there is a direct comparison between VMware and IBM. Mostly for VMware, it's Windows Linux workload on Intel. For IBM PowerVM, critical applications run on AX and IBM i. Basically, the tool is for critical applications.

VMware offers better clustering options compared to IBM PowerVM.

The product's deployment phase is straightforward since my company has been doing that for the longest time.

For a simple environment, the solution can be deployed in one to two days, but for a complex environment, it takes one to two weeks.

I cannot say there's an impact in terms of cost efficiency since it is more on the reliability side. On the cost side, the tool offers more through lesser downtime or lesser need for maintenance, and that has probably impacted the cost of the tool for the customers.

The tool is competitively priced, especially right now. It is not only the IBM PowerVM you purchase but also the hardware since, in terms of compatibility, they are built for each other.

In terms of reliability, IBM PowerVM is one of the best tools. The tool offers a reliable virtualization technology.

The most beneficial part of the product for system scalability revolves around the area of LPARs and IBM PowerHA.

Most of the time, our customers don't use the tool's live partition mobility to streamline operations because the system rarely goes down. If our customers need to move to another tool, they can just switch to a disaster recovery site.

I have faced no challenges in managing multiple virtual machines with IBM PowerVM. Most of our customers have, like, less than ten virtual machines or LPARs, so managing them is fairly simple.

So far, there has been no focus on the AI part in areas like software or the database. The AI part is new in the Philippines, so we don't have any use cases related to it at the moment.

I recommend IBM PowerVM to others, especially for critical applications. I would not recommend the tool to startup companies or those who can just move to the cloud.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.