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IBM Power Systems pros and cons

Vendor: IBM
4.4 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM Power Systems offer exceptional performance and reliability, making them highly valuable for managing critical applications.
Virtualization with PowerVM allows for efficient resource management and scalability, enabling users to easily adapt to changing needs.
Customers value the system's processing power, stability, and security, which are crucial for high-end databases and resilient data systems.
IBM Power Systems provide outstanding technical support and regular security updates, enhancing their reliability and customer satisfaction.
The ability to upgrade system resources such as storage and memory seamlessly contributes to its scalability and ensures no downtime.

CONS

IBM Power Systems has issues with software vendor support, as vendors are not moving onto the platform.
The pricing is considered too high, and there is a need for price improvements.
Scalability depends on the initial sizing, and simplification is required for the scalability process.
Technical support and documentation need improvements.
The platform does not support X86 or X64 Intel architecture-based applications, which limits business use cases.
 

IBM Power Systems Pros review quotes

Oct 17, 2017
The backups work great, data recovery works great.
it_user756285 - PeerSpot reviewer
EVP Technical Solutions at Helpsystems
Oct 17, 2017
From a software developer standpoint, virtualization is really the key, as we can more easily spin up a new partition, virtual instance of IBM i.
SysArchi8bbf - PeerSpot reviewer
Sys architect at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
From a reliability standpoint it has provided us with excellent performance.
Learn what your peers think about IBM Power Systems. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user758181 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior unix engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Oct 19, 2017
The virtualization and the quality you get from it is one reason we like the solution.
it_user758208 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
It scales a lot, you can just keep on adding frames, you can add on CPUs, you get capacity on demand, you can tune the machine very easily to handle different workloads.
it_user758217 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior systems admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Oct 19, 2017
Power runs our resilient data systems, our high-end databases, stuff that can't go down.
BF
Admin at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
PowerVM.
it_user626946 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Jun 24, 2018
On the security side, we get regular security patch updates and system hardening. There are free tools available to harden the system.
Amjad Banna - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Engineer at GCE
Jul 15, 2020
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.
Getachew Zeleke - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Custormer Engineer at Afcor PLC
Aug 13, 2020
The initial setup is simple and straightforward.
 

IBM Power Systems Cons review quotes

Oct 17, 2017
Everyone likes speed. Not that speed has been an issue up until now but you can never be too fast.
it_user756285 - PeerSpot reviewer
EVP Technical Solutions at Helpsystems
Oct 17, 2017
Better manage heterogeneous footprints of all the different operating systems that are out there across one common interface.
SysArchi8bbf - PeerSpot reviewer
Sys architect at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
The lack of software vendors moving onto the platform, as opposed to fleeing the platform, is an issue.
Learn what your peers think about IBM Power Systems. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user758181 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior unix engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Oct 19, 2017
If you take advantage of some of these real advanced features, for oversubscribing as an example, it's not supported on Linux on Power. So that stops us, in particular, from going that way.
it_user758208 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
I know lab services does a lot of work but systems, if they could include some kind of lab services and bundling of services to get you to the greatest and latest feature at the already included cost
it_user758217 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior systems admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Oct 19, 2017
I would like to see firmware available to all of the systems.
BF
Admin at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
I think IBM needs a little more work on managing the overall environment with eliminating Systems Director.
it_user626946 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Jun 24, 2018
One of the features that we would like, and I think they are also adapting to the latest trends in the market, is to make it more open, more flexible... With VMware, anybody can create a virtual machine without any knowledge of the server side. But with AIX it's a bit difficult.
Amjad Banna - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Engineer at GCE
Jul 15, 2020
It would be ideal if the solution was more simple to work with.
Getachew Zeleke - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Custormer Engineer at Afcor PLC
Aug 13, 2020
Technical support and documentation need to be improved.