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IBM PowerVM pros and cons

Vendor: IBM
4.3 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM PowerVM is praised for its exceptional stability and reliability, offering 99.999% availability and handling workloads with ease.
PowerVM excels in resource management, including dynamic allocation of hardware resources such as RAM and CPU, and Active Memory Sharing for efficient memory use.
Users highly value the scalability and flexibility of PowerVM, allowing easy integration of new products and optimal management of various environments like development and production.
The administration and technical support of PowerVM receive high praise for being accessible and responsive, ensuring a seamless user experience.
PowerVM is recognized for robust virtualization capabilities, particularly with real-time migration, swift optimization, and the highest clock speed for superior database performance.

CONS

IBM PowerVM has limited solutions for container virtualization and lacks full platform virtualization.
The high cost of IBM PowerVM compared to competitors like x86 servers is a significant concern.
The platform does not integrate well with Microsoft and could improve in integrating features like VMware vCenter for better management capabilities.
Licensing and hardware model could be improved, as its current system is more complex than standard hardware procurement.
Automatic LPM and enhanced clustering features are desired for improved performance and flexibility.
 

IBM PowerVM Pros review quotes

AA
ICT Business Solution Architect at Cloud Technology
Oct 13, 2019
What I like about this solution, is that it is easy to configure.
it_user1195593 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 22, 2019
The feature that I like most is the versatility.
MG
Unix Team Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Jan 29, 2020
It's in English, so its exceptional qualities make the control environment more flexible, easier, more stable, and easy to recover after issues.
Learn what your peers think about IBM PowerVM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Amro Saleh - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Arab Bank
Jan 30, 2020
The stability is the most valuable aspect of this solution. IBM is the most powerful and stable platform.
it_user1277046 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Unistar
Feb 5, 2020
The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of managing the hardware resources such as RAM, CPU, and the network.
EL
Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Apr 23, 2020
The case fileserver on the web server is the most valuable feature.
Kevin Honde - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Solution Architect at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe
Aug 2, 2020
It's scalable. Whenever we buy another product other than hardware, it's easily integrated into the virtualization software that we download.
Atif Najam - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd
May 17, 2021
Active Memory Sharing dynamically reallocates memory of running partitions based on changing workload demands. The memory for the pool is carved out from Physical memory and is made logical memory. The said memory is not available to be assigned to partitions as dedicated memory. A min, max and desired as well as weight is assigned to the memory of each lpar to help hypervisor make a decision in case a condition where priority is to be given to a certain lapr to use the memory form shared pool.
MN
IT Manager at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
May 29, 2021
Technical support is great.
AS
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Jun 12, 2021
The most valuable features in this solution are you do not get degradation in the performance like you could get in other solutions. There is a physical adapter that is better than a virtual one and you can assign adapters to a VM.
 

IBM PowerVM Cons review quotes

AA
ICT Business Solution Architect at Cloud Technology
Oct 13, 2019
The program has very limited solutions for the virtualization of containers
it_user1195593 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 22, 2019
Any improvements that can be made in the interface will go a long way to helping us work better.
MG
Unix Team Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Jan 29, 2020
I would like for IBM to be more focuses on the cloud.
Learn what your peers think about IBM PowerVM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Amro Saleh - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Arab Bank
Jan 30, 2020
To make it a ten, I would like for them to add automation and configuration tools in order to help use the manager.
it_user1277046 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Unistar
Feb 5, 2020
The interface is not user-friendly in places, so it could use some improvement.
EL
Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Apr 23, 2020
The performance should be improved.
Kevin Honde - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Solution Architect at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe
Aug 2, 2020
If it could actually virtualize the entire platform it might be better. If you're having more than one virtualization technology, maybe there's a way to actually have less - one technology to run the data center and maybe one special virtualization for power. If it integrated with other platforms more effectively it might be better.
Atif Najam - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd
May 17, 2021
A GUI version of VIOS would be a great plus for people moving from Intel-based hypervisors.
MN
IT Manager at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
May 29, 2021
The licensing could be better.
AS
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Jun 12, 2021
This solution is lacking the ability to have servers act as a cluster, such as in VMware. IBM has come out with a feature similar to VMware's vCenter but it is not as mature. They need to add LPM shared-nothing feature, such as in vMotion.