IBM Power Systems Reviews

We like the resiliency, we like the flexibility, the speed of the processor. 

It brings reliability. Rarely do we have failures.

TCOs is highly competitive, if not always the best, especially if you're running a per-core priced database.

No issues. Very stable.

Highly scalable. No issues scaling.

I'd say they were been better in the past. Obviously it depends who you get. You need to know how to drive your support calls to get maximum effectiveness but, on a one to 10 scale, I'd give them a six.

They could improve responsiveness, ownership of problems, and technical acumen on the first level.

Hardware migrations: logical partition mobility. Move it right onto the next platform.

Software x updates are pretty straightforward. I don't have much experience with i. And Linux is Linux.

In terms of the AIX, we are  definitely seeing a return on investment from moving from original versions of Power to POWER8, in performance. And we're definitely getting a per-core gain by moving to POWER8. In addition, the whole I/O speeds in general are improving.

We've primarily beem a Power shop. There have been other considerations, for x86. We were sing Linux on Intel before Power. We chose IBM because of total cost of ownership. 

It's always been the platform for enterprise applications and go-to production systems that need that sort of reliability to run. 

We're currently working with POWER7 and POWER8. We use it for AIX, IBM i and Linux.

I would absolutely recommend Linux on Power. I believe we're going to expand our use of Linux on Power.

I think IBM is a market leader in servers. To maintain that position I'd say the Open foundations that they've created are a good way of pulling in a broader base of users and technology. Keep improving around those arenas to get better.

Regarding the OpenPOWER Foundation, I think it brings a credibility to the Linux platform, and it allows customers to see that enterprises are serious about using Linux and exploiting its functionalities on Power.

The chip itself is a higher performing chip than x86 chips, and we get the IBM hardware on top of it.

To not have to manage the chipset or have the software or hardware really be a concern for us. It just runs itself.

This isn't really related to Power, it's related more to the OS system level, but instead of chasing the industry they should lead the industry. A lot of the things that are being deployed on Power now are things like Node.js and things of that nature. But they're chasing the market, they're not leading the market.

Since the beginning.

We have had issues, but they haven't been because of Power, they've been because of partner errors on our system.

The scalability is phenomenal as it scales up. I'm here at the Power Conference to learn about how I can possibly scale out with the Power systems.

They are very knowledgeable but there's some bureaucracy as far as the time to respond goes, as far as getting back to us with what we need.

They tend to request logs an awful lot when the solution doesn't always warrant that.

We started on a System/36 and grew into the AS/400 and we're still going with IBM i. It was always IBM because a lot of our code is written in-house. We're definitely planning on moving up to POWER 8 in the future.

The big version releases, as far as 5 to 6, and 6 to 7 were complicated. All the point releases were fairly straightforward.

In terms of the upgrades from previous versions, we definitely see a return on investment. We get more processor, more CPW, and it's basically the same price.

We are currently using version 7.2 with IBM i only.

I don't know that Power uniquely positions our business, it's more of what we do as a business to position ourselves, as far as our commitment to customer service and customer care.

I think they're definitely a leader in the server industry as far as Power goes. From what I've been hearing at this conference, they're doing a lot with the Power chip to help maintain that position. So, I'm happy with it.

The performance, the resiliency, and in the capacity that IBM provides the customer, that you can support old versions like, for example, AIX 5.3/ 6.1 in the new versions.

In our case we are a business partner, we sell solutions. But I think what our customers appreciate most is that they can save space, since Power is high performance. You can have fewer machines, fewer servers and good performance in your environment.

Since the cloud is so in demand right now, there is a feature that VMware has which is vMotion. I would like this with PowerVC, NovaLink, PowerVM. I would like IBM to improve that feature so that we can sell it to our customers and improve their satisfaction.

IBM is definitely a market leader in servers but to maintain that position it needs to improve how the information gets to the customer. Sometimes IBM is very good at doing new things but nobody knows about it.

We have been using Power since before it was named Power, RS/6000 and the like. We've worked with POWER more than 10 years.

We had issues, but not so big. Most of the time they have been simple things, performance, microcode updates and things like that; but never a big issue that I can recall.

I think scalability is wonderful because you can get start with a small machine and you can grow as you want.

In our regions it's Argentina that provides the service to us. It's very good. They always help us.

It's straightforward, it is very simple.

When it comes to upgrading from POWER7 to 8, or other upgrades, there can be a return on investment because you can use some parts of a POWER7 machine and build them in to a new POWER8 and I think it's a cost savings for our customers.

I don't know too much about licensing or prices or the like, even though I get involved in the configuration, presales and that kind of thing. I am just hoping to see what is coming with POWER9.

We haven't considered any competitors at the moment, but we do have competition back there in my country, of course. We chose IBM because of its performance, resiliency and the capacity you have to make LPARs. It's very good.

We have POWER8, POWER7, we still have some POWER6 and some POWER5. We're using it for AIX.

It just works. I don't know how else to explain it. We don't have a lot of issues with it. It handles our enterprise systems well.

Performance. We run our financial environment on it and there are key dates you always have to hit. Performance is key there, when we close the quarters and the like. You can't risk missing dates for getting your numbers to the street.

I could see a benefit in some organizations if licensing were more cloud oriented. We're not big in the cloud yet. I guess at some point that would probably help.

Pricing has room for improvement. It's definitely more competitive now than it was. That was an issue we had a while back where you'd look at the cost and it was just so much more for it. It was a hard sell.

No issues.

No issues.

Support is good. I think it used to be much better. Sometimes it takes too long to get to the right person. You have to go through too many levels to get to the person you need, that has that skill set. I understand that, there's level-three, and you have to escalate and it takes time.

Straightforward.

We have been seeing a return on investment in the moves from version to version due to better performance and they cut the licensing costs down. 

It was only Power for the most part. We started with it a long time ago. The rest of our environment runs on Linux, SUSE and Redhat for application web servers.

We use it for AIX. We actually just got P850s but they were refreshed.

I consider IBM to be a market leader in the server industry but to maintain that position pricing is the main thing, to be able to compete with Linux. It's difficult on x86. But on the side of trying to sell it to management, they just look at costs a lot of the time and it's a tough sell; they don't really deal with the reliability of the system's performance.

I like the processor speed. I don't think that there's a match for it out there. I like the use of the Hypervisor and the VIO functions that you can utilize. I just don't think that there's anything out that matches it, and it's easy to implement.

The flexibility of it, being able to run multiple OS's on it. I can run Linux on it, I can run i on it, I can run AIX on it, and it's all on the same physical hardware. Being able to do that, it just gives us a lot of flexibility in that area.

I know that they are doing a lot with Linux, so maybe a more direct way of converting to Linux on some applications; some way to actually sell it a little bit better. Because you still get into the expense of going to the Power hardware, but if you're already on the Power hardware, I don't see the issue. A lot of people just don't seem to want to progress onto Linux, but they want to keep Linux on the Wintel or Intel devices. And to me, you just don't get the chips and the ability of the chips that you get on AIX, and on the Power hardware.

We've been using Power since I've been with the company. I've been there 16 years. 

AIX is very stable. Our whole Power system has been very stable. We very rarely have outages. Most of the outages have not been attributed to the hardware, it's more attributed to network or SAN. 

Now we have had some hardware outages, but those are based on doing maintenance such as firmware upgrades, and the like. Those have caused issues, but you know when those are happening because you've already had them scheduled. So you know to be prepared for it, what work will be done.

We have not had any issues with our scalability.

Technical support is good. When you find the right people, they are very knowledgeable. But you have to know to get the right one, you have to explain your issue properly, that way you can get to the right person.

I feel upgrades are straightforward, especially the AIX upgrades. Because, unlike with Windows, you have all the small fix packs, most of the time you're either doing a major TL or a service pack. I feel that that is much easier than having to go through doing all of the small pieces.

In terms of the upgrades of AIX and the Power from the 7 to the 8, I did see a return of the investment because we have a small Oracle data base running on some of our apps. To be able to take it from the POWER7 where you're using .1 CPU - this is just in development - that you could take it down to .05 CPU and double the number of LPARs that you have, that is a very good feature.

We do have a lot of Wintel as well, so it's more of a mix and match. Yes, other things have been considered. We went with IBM because we have been with IBM hosting, and one of our main apps is running on AIX. We would have to do a lot to convert it. So it seems to be running fine where it is.

We're running on POWER7s and POWER8. We started with POWER4, and moved up. In fact, we started with 7028s and 7013s at one time. We've been in the business a good while. We're using it for AIX and now we're using it for i as well.

I think the Power system uniquely positions our company with the speed it has, and the processing power. I think it keeps our app running at a maximum output, and that keeps the company running better.

I do consider IBM to be a market leader. I would say for them to maintain it, to me, I don't like the thing of following the trend of everybody, everybody's trying to go in this direction, that direction. I feel like sometimes you can just improve on your product, and that will increase your market share, versus following the trend of everyone else.

Reliability would be the strongest thing. Speed and performance are a couple of the other top ones.

It helps our run times and our batches run faster. It allows people to get their job done faster. It allows us to deliver better SLA's. I'm not sure that it uniquely positions our company in our industry.

I don't know how you can improve on something that is as stable as it is.

IBM changes licensing, so to speak, with the wind. You never know what they're going to go with. It would be nicer if it were simpler. And, maybe not so costly, that would help.

I've been using AIX and Power for about 20 years.

Stability is 100%.

The boxes we bought, they're probably not really scalable, because we locked into 850s in a lot of them, but the 870 is more scalable. I think for what we have, and the size, they do fine.

I've used them over the years, but not in a while. In the past they were very good.

Straightforward, as are the upgrades.

When upgrading from previous versions, in terms of ROI, maybe now there's a little bit, but at least that way it's always backwards compatible, so we don't really have any upgrade issues. I guess the payment back would be the low likelihood of failure or failed upgrades.

We just moved to POWER8 this year, and we saw a big improvement from POWER7.

It is costly compared to other solutions but we justify it by the reliability.

We didn't consider competitors for this part of our environment. We chose IBM for its reliability. It runs our Oracle back end systems.

We have four 850s and one 870. We use them for AIX.

When I think servers, and market leaders, I think of Intel. Since they got out of that business, IBM is a leader in what they're focused on right now, which is Power, mainframe. That's really the only thing that is left. They have no competition.

I'm not sure of the actual term, but being able to delegate and take back the chips, and DB2. DB2 is a must.

We're able to streamline and clone our systems. All of our systems on the floor do the exact same thing, and that works for us.

Not sure. Everything works great.

IBM does a great job of incorporating the latest technology, but it's hard to give IT a 10 out of 10, we're always growing and fluctuating. 

None at all. (Then again, we keep developers off our systems). 

No issues. Unlimited growth with Power.

We have CE's and they're awesome. Scale of one to 10, they're tens.

We've had Compaq, we've had Solaris, we have Dell for our workstations, but IBM for our "big iron." It does what it's supposed to do, better, faster, and more efficiently. We also chose IBM for the support and the products.

Very straightforward. The field engineers usually come in and place the hardware on the floor and install it, and we take it from there. 

Compared to what we've dealt with, with Sun Solaris/Oracle and Compaq, the cost model is great.

In terms of the upgrade from previous systems to POWER8, we've seen a return on investment. We're able to do more with less. We're actually using fewer engineers to do it. I'm kind of skeptical that we could do even more with even fewer engineers, but yes, it can always be improved.

We have the whole scope of hardware, and we're running AIX 7.2. We have POWER7, POWER8. We actually still have some POWER5 on the floor. 

Power uniquely positions our company in the industry because of the unlimited growth.

I consider IBM to be the market leader in servers. They just need to keep doing what they're doing.

First of all, the reliability. Also, Power really is the most powerful chipset out there for midrange environments. Performance is also very important for me and all of the customers that I'm supporting.

Reliability and the performance. 

For management, they feel more secure. They feel they are not just running on any platform, on some Intel base that is going to fail sometimes. They trust that they are going to have 99.9% reliability. They are going to have customers satisfied who are accessing those new services that IBM is implementing. They just trust in Power, really trust in them for their reliability.

Right now, in our region, they are moving to contracting things over the cloud. There are some services that we are providing - we are leasing space, we are leasing machines. If customers could truly license cloud-based or, possibly, acquire cloud-based capacity to process things over the cloud, that would be great. That would be an improvement.

Almost six years.

We have never had any issues with scalability. It's the other way around. Customers like the Power system with IBM i because they can move move forward, they can acquire new equipment, they can upgrade versions of the operating system without affecting what they developed years ago.

I'm part of the support team where I work for. The support team at IBM is just excellent.

Our clients choose Power because they trust the platform. They trust IBM i. They are really comfortable with it. We even have new customers that had not previously used Power's servers or IBM i. They are moving to the platform because of trust, not just in Power itself, the hardware, but also their trust in IBM, the trust in their delivery, the trust in their support.

In terms of upgrades, if you compare it with other platforms, it's very straightforward. It's very easy and the documentation is very clear with everything that you have to take into account.

When moving from previous versions to POWER8, or in general when upgrading, you see a return on investment. You get an improvement in technology and that means customers trust in the platform, that they are going to invest money and they're going to get that money back. Not just in terms of upgrading the versions because they're performing badly, but in reliability for the customers because of the service they are providing.

IBM is a market leader and to stay there they need to keep going with the trends and the customers, keep moving towards the cloud, keep going in the cognitive area. IBM is going to be at the top of the list for a while.