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IBM Turbonomic vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Management (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (9th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (3rd), AIOps (17th)
SolarWinds Virtualization M...
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 17.1%, up from 15.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 9.0%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Turbonomic17.1%
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager9.0%
Other73.9%
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1446966 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution reduced our operational expenditures and is able to identify points before we even noticed them
The management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens. When I change the resolution to 1080, I only see half of what I would on my big 4K monitor. It would be annoying to have to scroll to see the flow chart. They have a flow chart that goes top to bottom like a tree. On a lower resolution, it might be nice if that scrolls horizontally because it's long, narrow, and tall. It's only three icons wide, but it's 15 icons tall. I think it would be helpful to have the ability to change that for a smaller screen and customize the widget.
Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customer Service: Perfect, with attention to details on every open ticket, and Technical Support: Top notch effort put into each support request."
"Turbonomic, per its design, finds bottlenecks and, depending on how it is configured, recommends actions and takes action to resolve the bottlenecks."
"We have saved more from cost avoidance on a recent expansion than the product will cost over three years."
"It has helped save cloud costs by seven figures."
"I've found that the automation of moving VMs for resource allocation is second to none."
"The most valuable features to our organization is the automation of the VM’s to prevent performance issues and to balance the resources of our ESX host."
"With a high memory contention environment Turbonomic has been invaluable in maintaining excellent performance across all of our clusters."
"The automation has been great, as Turbonomic automatically moved VMs that were running slow due to high IO on their LUNs, correcting the problem and greatly improving our server performance while continuously adjusting to keep everything running smoothly as the environment changes."
"If you’re looking to get a lot more insight into your virtualization environment and more than just basic information, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is the choice you should make."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"This product is so helpful out-of-the-box."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"Alerting expands, and makes, our monitoring and management much more efficient."
"Virtualization manager’s cost analysis comparison report identified areas in which specific customers were being grossly undercharged for their resource consumption levels, as compared to rates available through AWS."
 

Cons

"Certain versions have had glitches in the past but they've usually been fixed or patched within a matter of days."
"vCenter integration. Would love to have the ability to manager the infrastructure within one window."
"Regular upgrades and patching requires a period of getting used to the new environment before getting hands-on with the tool."
"The management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens."
"However, the current versions do not split out headroom by component nor do they indicate where the capacity bottleneck lies (e.g. CPU, memory, or storage)."
"Due to the planner feature's breadth of scenarios it can be a little confusing to get the right result for the scenario you need."
"I would love to see Turbonomic analyze backup data. We have had people in the past put servers into daily full backups with seven-year retention and where the disk size is two terabytes. So, every single day, there is a two terabyte snapshot put into a Blob somewhere. I would love to see Turbonomic say, "Here are all your backups along with the age of them," to help us manage the savings by not having us spend so much on the storage in Azure. That would be huge."
"The appliance interface doesn’t list the features/capabilities that licenses can be purchased for, so unless you were directly involved in the negotiations, there is no way to tell what feature set you have."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"Out of the box support for a wider array of hardware vendor/device-specific SNMP mibs could be improved upon."
"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment."
"Adhoc reporting takes time to get used to – due mainly to the fact that the team I am on are all admins, and not necessarily accustomed to query reporting in the manner utilized by Solarwinds Virtualization Manager."
"The UI is a little cumbersome at first, but the more you use it and get accustomed to it, the simpler it becomes."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."
"We see ROI in extended support agreements (ESA) for old software. Migration activities seem to be where Turbonomic has really benefited us the most. It's one click and done. We have new machines ready to go with Turbonomic, which are properly sized instead of somebody sitting there with a spreadsheet and guessing. So, my return on investment would certainly be on currency, from a software and hardware perspective."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"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."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"I consider the pricing to be high."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise147
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
SolarWinds VMAN
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Elliot Health System
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Turbonomic vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,351 professionals have used our research since 2012.