IBM Turbonomic Reviews

Most valuable to our organisation are the Planning module and the VM Rightsizing Recommendations. The planning module provide a mechanism for us to try out different scenarios based upon expected growth, ensuring that we can meet the capacity demands of our business. The VM Rightsizing Recommendations show us how over or under-utilised our resources are and makes suggestions to improve performance by adding or removing VM resources as needed.

On a daily basis we analyse the recommendations that VMTurbo provides and decide on whether these need to be followed. This ensures that our environment is running at optimal performance, providing the necessary resources that our customers need.

For us there are 2 areas that the product could be improved. Firstly the documentation and help files are not overly intuitive, providing very few examples or details on how to gain the most out of the product. The second area is around reporting. There is easy way to generate customised reports without writing complex SQL queries. A GUI report writer would greatly enhance the product.

We have had this solution in production since November 2013.

No issues were encountered with the deployment of the product.

We have experienced one issue with the product during our time using it. This turned out to be a bug and was promptly resolved as part of a subsequent patch release.

No issues have been encountered with scalability.

The customer service team were very helpful when we needed them. They were knowledgeable at initial call, and promptly got back to us after diagnosis of our problem.

The technical team are very knowledgeable of the product and we would rate their level of service very highly.

No, we did not use any previous solution.

The initial install was very straightforward. We downloaded the package and uploaded to our Virtual Environment. After following a few guided steps, it was completed.

Our implementation was done through an in-house team. No problems were experienced, and the install was well documented and straightforward.

Our ROI can be measured in the amount of server hardware that we have not had to purchase due to using VMTurbo Operations Manager. By following the recommendations of the product, and placing our VMs as recommended we estimate that we have saved ourselves in the region of $50,000+ NZD by not having to purchase at least one additional VM Host.

he original purchase cost was $11,000 USD with a setup cost of approximately $1000 USD (includes engineering time). Ongoing day-to-day costs are negligible, with time spent reading recommendations and a weekly check for updates of the product.

We did evaluate VMware vCentre Operations Manager before choosing VMTurbo Operations Manager, but found it lacked some of the important features that VMTurbo provided.

There are a few parts that I would rate higher than 8, specifically the Planning module, and one that needs more work being the Reporting module. When implementing, we would highly recommend working with the VMTurbo team to undertake some training to get the most out of the product. The documentation is not as good as it could be, so training would be invaluable.

Resource Optimization: The system automatically sizes and moves resources based on the needs of the applications. This optimization results in better performance and less resources needed.

It has allowed our IT organization to keep investments in hardware flat for a projected three year period. In addition, we have seen a 30% performance improvement overall.

Automation: The ability to make changes, up or down, and move resources in order to ensure performance, making our investments last longer.

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.

• Improving the overall efficiency of the dashboard.
• Plan View
• Environmental Health Chart

We utilized the Plan View to understand our hardware requirements. When we replaced our old hardware with the new hardware in our datacenters, we were able to more accurately predict our needs, then with the old rule of thumb method.

We have two Turbonomic sites set up and use an aggregator to provide an overview of them. The biggest suggestion that I could make is for the changes in the aggregator to be imported into the Turbonomic sites. Currently, we make the change at one site, then the second site keeps our environment on an equal basis.

We have used Turbonomic for over two and a half years.

No, there have never been any issues in deployment.

Early on in our PoC, we encountered issues, where some of our VMGuests failed to have their information log correctly. That was a number of versions ago and we have not experienced the issue since.

The only issue we have had with scalability is that the sites are not integrated into the aggregator. We need to update each site individually and cannot export or import the changes, and need to do double duty to maintain a level playing field in multiple environments.

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

We did not have a previous solution.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

A vendor team who was excellent.

Turbonomic has provided us an automagic optimization of our environment from an operational point of view. I am not sure if we could have as easily setup the same functionality from vROps or on such a granular level.

The most common features we use are the reports for VM performance and the planning tools. We use the planning tools to right-size hardware purchases when replacing old hardware. It takes the guess work out of switching hardware platforms.

It has reduced our hardware costs by allowing us to purchase only the necessary resources instead of over purchasing out of caution.

The automated resize of VMs requires caution. Make sure you properly configure this feature before it is enabled.

It's been a while. About five years.

No.

No.

No.

Wonderful. They have strong technical support that is very willing to dig into problems.

Wonderful. They have strong technical support that is very willing to dig into problems.

Not having to dig through any event logs, alerts or performance logs within the vSphere clients and instead getting direct recommendations from Turbonomic is wonderful.

While none of our VMs are highly transactional, good performance 24/7 is needed in the healthcare realm. Turbonomic gives us insight and assurance that we are meeting operational targets.

The old interface looks a bit dated and the new one does not seem to have all the information the old one has (which is why I use the old one). It can take me a bit of searching to find the endpoint I want to analyze further.

Also, more/better alerts would be useful, e.g. when action is warranted where automatic operations have not been enabled.

Two years.

None.

When upgrading prior versions, I sometimes lost prior performance data. Even support was not able to retrieve it. It was not that critical at the time, but frustrating nonetheless. That being said, recent updates have not resulted in any data loss.

No.

Customer service is very good and the wait times are minimal.

Technical support is very good and the wait times are minimal.

No.

Initial setup is as easy as you would want. Simply deploy the OVA and point it to vCenter.

Implemented on my own.

I cannot quantify ROI at this time, but can attest to the many hours saved in virtual maintenance and the number of times we've been able to conclusively show optimal performance under given environments.

It's by no means a cheap product, but worth the investment.

We had been using VMware's ESXi Enterprise Plus with all of its features, including DRS and HA. Turbonomic simply fit the bill when we looked at it.

No.

Automation of leveling out compute power across servers and forecasting.

I would simplify the navigation, this would be a great read-only tool to give to upper management.

One year.

Not a single hiccup.

It eats memory but a simple reboot fixes that.

No.

Nine out of 10.

Nine out of 10.

Only native VMware solutions.

Very simple.

In-house.

Not 100% sure.

I do not.

No, this was provided to me.

The support team is outstanding!

Planning and workload placement.

Planning infrastructure needs for our virtual environment was previously a tedious task that included a lot of guesswork. With Turbonomic we can now precisely model future workload and infrastructure supply to plan for growth.

The UI can be slow and occasionally hangs, requiring logging out and back in. More informative progress status when working with plans would be helpful.

Four months.

None.

Minor issues when removing targets from the application, requiring reboot of the Turbonomic virtual appliance.

None.

Customer service has been superb. Our account team has been available to guide us through deployment and configuration of the tool. They've helped us understand how to use Plan and Policy to forecast and organize workloads.

N/A: I have not had to work with technical support yet. My colleague who has though, reports that they have been helpful and responsive.

No other solution deployed previously.

Setup was simple and fast.

The vendor has been very helpful in getting the software installed and configured. They are extremely knowledgeable and professional.

We've been able to balance our environment with much more automated ease than was previously possible.

They could do with a little less UI clutter.

3 years.

None.

None.

Turbonomic is fantastic at scalability! It has great built in tools to plan scaling.

5/5 stars, Turbonomic representatives are always available and friendly!

5/5 stars, representatives have always been able to rapidly address any technical concern and get any changes up and running when we need them!

Very straightforward, we were able to easily import the VMWare appliance to our environment.