IBM Power Systems Reviews

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.

Specifically about System i, it's simple, it's secure, it has a lot of resiliency. As far as I know, we've never been attacked by a virus.

I've been supporting core banking for the past 15 to 20 years directly in Power, and before I was supporting banking in OS/390.

Power systems are compact, their licenses are not as expensive as OS/390, and they fit the banking solution. They're very easy to run and operate for computer operators. They're all menu driven, it's English driven, and you can have different languages. It's a great system. It works for me.

Security is one. But it's a total, comprehensive solution.

It's really good for banking. As a matter of fact, I know many banks that are using AS400s as their back end on Power. 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's very efficient, it's secure, it's robust and resilient, you can add on disaster recovery and it's cool.

IBM could perhaps be a bit more aggressive in terms of marketing, and let customers really know that they're out there and can offer a helping hand to move them along, to implement all these great features. Because, in attending the classes here at the IBM Power Conference, over the years, every time they ask, "Are you on this latest and greatest feature?" many people are not there as yet. Yet the feature may have been announced a few years ago. Sometimes it's because companies need to have migration projects, and a bit of money and time to get this going.

IBM could be more aggressive in that area.

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... If you include the cost in the base machine, you pay for something once, or it's in your maintenance... because to go and ask for money every time, it's a problem.

Power systems, pretty much since they came out. I've been using AS400 system since the '90s, and I continue to use them, System i.

The upgrade from version to version is not complex. I think it's fairly straightforward and IBM provides a lot of documentation, check-listing, features, so all you've have to do is be methodical, go through the checklists step by step and it's fine.

No issues. If we needed capacity in an emergency, a few years back, we would call IBM if we had a problem. They could turn on a code and we could have an extra CPU. But these days, capacity is in pretty good shape. We have some resources we can move around to give the systems that need it more capacity, and we can move capacity dynamically.

And we know the workloads, so the machine is set to run dynamically. If we need capacity, we get it. We run things and we have all these monitoring capabilities, we monitor stuff, we send alerts and it works fine.

Some of our work is actually outsourced to IBM for the hardware. The hardware works fine, the Power hardware, it's amazing. Years back they had some 10-key disk drives that would tend to fail, but recently disk drives are really much improved, and you can do hot swap. You can pull a drive out, put a new one in.

Apart from disk drives, really and truly you don't see many hardware issues. You may have a power supply that fails, but because of all the redundancy, it's good.

And on the software side, there is hardly a need for support calls. The key is, as long as you're patching very often and you're up to date with the PTFs, it runs pretty well.

In terms of the upgrade from version to version, we see a return on investment, absolutely. There are always features, improvement, SQL and Java; on the hardware, on Power. 

With the technology, when I went from POWER5 to POWER6, I got a something like a 71% increase in horsepower. When I went from POWER6 to 7 I think it was a 20% improvement in CPW. And I believe from POWER7 to 8, I've been told it's either 75% or double.

So every time IBM comes out with a newer chip, great improvements.

Really mostly IBM for the workload that we run. IBM and the System i is very well suited for it, for the core banking systems.

Recently there have been a lot of changes, and a lot of good things that we are planning to use. What we've been seeing is that within the Power system itself, there are more and more capabilities and features. You do not have to go outside and buy a third-party program product - like for replication, you don't have to go to a third-party. Years ago, you'd have to go for system monitoring.

IBM is building in all the tools you need to run the system: monitoring, replication, disaster recovery. I think if IBM continues to do the same thing - and every day they're bringing the price point down, with more CPW - they should just keep on doing what they're doing.

I don't have a problem with Power systems, especially running System i. For people running AIX, the interface is a bit more cryptic and they need a lot of commands. But once you implement System i on Power, it's a 10. It rocks. We're doing some work in Mexico right now where we're converting from OS/390 to Power systems.

The reliability is the main thing. Reliability and ease of use. The cost of ownership is down too.

It runs all our enterprise systems and because of the reliability, we don't have the same issue with downtime and unexpected downtime that other companies may have. I have been there for 10 years, running the Power, and we've had three unexpected experiences of downtime in 10 years.

We just want to see continued reliability and performance. And continued value for the price. The licensing could be simplified.

I have been using Power for 10 years. I have POWER7 and POWER8 and I use them for IBM i. We also have an 822L and Linux Red Hat. We started using Power on Linux a few months ago. We moved to it mainly because of the reliability.

It's got all the scalability I need. I can add on to to the box that I've got. Scale it out from where I'm at.

I have not had any problems with technical support. They have all done well every time I have needed them.

We were using Power5.

It was pretty straightforward. I have been doing this a long time, so it is pretty straightforward for me. There are more hardware things now that I've moved to external storage. It does become a little more complex there.

The licensing has improved over the years. I've been working with IBM for 30-plus years. The licenses have gotten better. We are experiencing some issues with Linux licensing between the different flavors, between Ubuntu and Red Hat, and which license you need for which machine, so that's getting to become a little complex.

No.

The OpenPOWER Foundation has brought many advantages. There are a lot more things available now, carried over from other industries.

I personally do consider IBM to be a market leader in servers. In order to maintain that position they just need to continue the performance and the reliability.

Flexibility and reliability are the two features that are probably the most important to us.

We get better performance out of our applications, out of our databases running on Power, than we would on anything else that we have looked at.

I think they could use a little more work in the upgrading of the OS, how that could happen as non-interrupting, but I think they are working on that.

Scalability is awesome because we can move from POWER8 to POWER9 when the new servers come out. It allows us to scale out, add new servers underneath it, buy new equipment and add it into the datacenter.

It was pretty straightforward. The partition mobility helps a lot.

We do see a return on that investment, especially on the software licensing, when we are licensing DB2 or we are licensing WebSphere. We have seen that we have had to license fewer cores on the POWER8 than we had on the POWER7.

We've been using more of the mid-range systems than some of the bigger models, and we like that price point. We like where we are at there. It allows us to scale out the datacenter faster. It also allows us to react to a company or an application that's growing faster than someone else.

No. We were an HPE shop and we converted over to Power at POWER5. We thought the Power roadmap was just better, better suited for us.

Using the Power system gives us a leg up. It helps us keep up with the competition.

What we like the best about the POWER8 is that it scaled down in size and power usage. When we were buying POWER5, we had to buy a 16U rack to get 16 cores and maybe a half terabyte of memory. Now I can buy one 4U box with 16 cores and put a terabyte of memory in it, and I'm in business.

We have now started thinking about moving to Linux on Power. We are just starting to scratch that surface.

The ongoing work that is being done behind the scenes, that keep improving the product, logical partition mobility, PowerVM, PowerAIX. I think that all of those help contribute to the way Power is running.

I do consider IBM to be a market leader and in order to remain a market leader they just need to keep improving. Keep improving the product, keep pushing the product. I think it looks great.

Primarily the reliability. I can set up a system and it runs until we decide to get rid of it.

The reliability is one. We have a lot of extra redundancy built into Power and we run our critical applications on there so it protects our brand and our business.

Since POWER4.

We are very happy with the performance.

No, we have not.

It's very good. They are knowledgeable and there is always a point of contact.

POWER8 definitely handles the workload better than POWER7 did, as far as the threading between having a lot of partitions running in a system. There is less impact when the system doesn't bog down, when a lot of applications are running.

Licensing is not an issue but it is something that we are being asked for from our leadership. Because usage fluctuates all the time, they want to know that they are only paying for what they are using. And we're all competing against the cloud vendors now.

No. We have been running on Power ever since we went to SAP.

I am using POWER8 for AIX and Linux.

I wouldn't say that Power uniquely positions our company in the industry. We run all of our internal applications on it and we keep our business running with it.

As far as IBM being a market leader, I would think that they are certainly one of the players, I don't know if they are the leader or not. In order to be a market leader I think IBM would have to get into more shops and get the word out there. It's kind of like the Windows mentality, a lot people go with what they know or what they see advertised.