IBM Power Systems Reviews

We primarily use the solution for running an ERP. Use cases can go from very small to very big. I'm talking about a hardware device, and therefore it can run all kinds of different software. The virtualization is outstanding. It can go from very, very small to very, very big. We personally use it so that we can use multi-tenancy. 

I can have multiple clients on one server and I can cut it up into tiny pieces. Where a customer would normally have to buy, let's say, one solution for a hundred thousand dollars, instead, they can share that a hundred thousand dollars with five other customers as one customer doesn't actually need a complete server. Clients can share it for cost reasons. 

It's very secure.

I can have what they call multi-tenancy, meaning that I can have multiple tenants within the same server.

The reliability of the solution has been excellent.

The solution is stable.

Technical support is exceptional.

The scalability is very, very good.

I've worked with the solution for a very long time, and therefore, when it comes to the things that it doesn't support, I've accepted that and I understand why they won't. If you asked me what I'd like added, I'd say that it'd be nice if they ran GPUs, however, I know that's not the direction they're going. That said, I would appreciate it if they offered GPU support. 

It used to have it and they pulled it out. That's something that's missing from it, however, there are workarounds.

I've been working with this product for 35 years.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. the security is excellent and the performance is good.

I literally have customers that have a server like this in a cupboard and they don't even know where their server is as it just keeps running.

The scalability on offer is excellent. It's very easy to scale and works well for small to large organizations. 

Technical support is excellent. We have been very happy with the level of service we get. 

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. It's not complex. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation. 

In terms of maintenance, we have a large staff, however, that's necessary due to the fact that we support so many clients. You need an administrator and it depends on how many clients you have, how many administrators you need. For a lot of our clients, we sell them one of these servers, and then we do all the work for them. We install it and then we do the administration. You need the appropriate administrators when you have this product. Small clients may need one administrator, whereas larger ones might need three or four.

We also work with Lenovo.

We are a reseller of IBM and Lenovo equipment. We are on the infrastructure side, mostly on the hardware side.

We sell systems to clients, however, we also have a cloud environment that we sell to clients using that equipment. We always say to customers, we sell what to them what we use ourselves.

We use versions seven to ten.

There are a lot of well-kept secrets to this product that a lot of people are not aware of and do not leverage all of the features that are available on the system. Therefore, if a company is looking to implement this solution, it should do some research. Go to user groups to speak to other users to find out about those well-kept secrets, free of charge.

I'd rate the solution a perfect ten out of ten. It's outstanding. It's so reliable. I have customers that run it that never touch it. It runs for 20 years by itself in a closet. It runs their entire business. 

We use this solution for the cloud and for some requirements related to the database.

I use the hypervisor of IBM Power Systems a lot.

Its price can be improved. It is too high. 

I have been using IBM Power Systems for about eight years.

It has very good stability. It has five nights of stability.

Its scalability is very good. You can scale it based on your demand and needs. We have four people who use this solution.

Their technical support is good. I would rate them an eight out of ten. It should be easier to contact technical support, and their response time should be quicker. 

The initial setup is a little bit complex. You need to have some technical knowledge to set up the system and interfaces. The deployment took about eight hours. 

The implementation strategy depends on the strategy of IBM and our enterprise.

Its price is too high.

Before implementing a solution, analyze the good points and benefits of different solutions, and make sure that the solution meets your requirements.

I would rate IBM Power Systems an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and we implement these systems for our clients. They are used for networking and other functions.

The most valuable features are Power Server, Power5, Power6, and PowerForce.

The power supplies often need replacing.

Technical support and documentation need to be improved.

I have been working with IBM Power Systems for about 20 years.

The Power Systems are scalable.

IBM provides us with procedures for assisting our clients when they need technical support.

Unfortunately, sometimes when I try to contact the technical support from IBM, they do not come back to me with answers.

I have worked with many similar solutions.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You just connect the cables.

The pricing is reasonable.

The suitability of this product depends on the customer's environment and its requirements. In general, I am 100% confident in the IBM Power Systems and I recommend them.

I would rate this solution an eight 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.

We are using it for database servers, and performance-wise it is one of the best available servers in the market.

For me, the AIX operating system is one of the best things because I'm a Unix guy and I like the flexibility of the operating system. It's very powerful.

One of the key features is that the performance is among the best. But also on the security side, we get regular security patch updates and system hardening. There are free tools available to harden the system. It's very unique.

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. Traditionally the Unix operating system was not very flexible. For example, if you are creating a virtual machine, it is not done the same way you would create it with VMware. With VMware, anybody can create a virtual machine without any knowledge of the server side. But with AIX it's a bit difficult. I think they are already in the process of improving it, making it more flexible and easier to use.

It is very stable. We haven't faced an issue with the servers until now.

It is scalable because the POWER8 server, the CPU allows up to eight or 10 cores. And you can add two more, so that is very good. Even the entry-level server will give you the option to have so many running on the same physical server.

We use the technical support from a local partner of IBM. They are very good. They know the technology very well and they have been highly professional during implementation and with support.

The setup is really straightforward, it's not that complex.

I would recommend, going for this solution, because it is one of the best solutions available in the Unix market now.

I would rate it eight out of 10. The reason is, as I said, the performance and stability, and the security included with the product.

In terms of selecting a vendor, we first go through the product features and evaluate them and see that the product suits our environment. Then, we look at the various product selection criteria, like ease of use and implementation. We also look at the cost, how costly it is to support in the future.

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.

Speaking from the IBM i perspective, it's a very well-integrated database, a well-designed power system. Plus, the Power gives us the performance that we need at a low cost.

I think we are able to run our entire organization on a smaller machine than if we had multiple Intel servers. The software that's available for the Power Systems also gives us our industry edge. 

It does everything that we require though we would like it to be faster.

I would also like to see a small developer model come out that I could purchase on my own to develop application software.

Probably six years. 

We are using POWER7 with IBM i to run our enterprise applications. We have been thinking of upgrading to POWER8, but at this point we are going to wait and just update to the POWER9.

No.

It's definitely scalable. You can go from a small model all the way up to as large as you need to go.

For the most part it's good, when you can get to second-level support. Usually, when you call first-level you get somebody in India who doesn't always know what they're talking about. So generally, you have to escalate it to second-level to get a good response.

We had maxed out our earlier versions, and when we moved to a POWER7 we saw a definite performance increase. It was able to take care of some of the bottlenecks that we were experiencing. In terms of power usage and space it's been great as well.

No, we are staying with the IBM Power Systems. 

I definitely view IBM as a market leader. I think where they fall down is in their marketing, getting their message out to other people. Because not too many people are aware of how great a system the Power is. You've got a lot of competition in the Intel world that somehow seems to get more marketing out there. 

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.