What is our primary use case?
We use PowerVM and PowerHA for our ERP system. The primary datacenter has two Power S922 nodes on a PowerHA failover cluster. Each node has two LPARs - one LPAR for Oracle database and another for e-business suite application. The disaster recovery datacenter has one Power S922 node with two LPARs - one for database and another for application.
How has it helped my organization?
IBM PowerVM on Power 922 server gave twice the performance of the legacy Oracle SPARC server. The faster CPU performance came without any increase in license cost of Oracle database and middleware. IBM PowerVM with IBM Spectrum Protect made it easier to use Cloud based infrastructure services like backup.
What is most valuable?
IBM PowerVM offers LPAR - the hard partitioned VM which helps us to ensure our Oracle licensing compliance. If you use soft partitioning technologies like VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V etc., there will be potentially a major licensing compliance issue. IBM PowerHA is used for higher availability of our mission critical Oracle ERP system. This high availability feature is used subject to the Oracle's free "10-days failover" licensing policy. This allows us to have a full fledged fail-over cluster without any licensing impact for the secondary server.
What needs improvement?
The automatic failover feature of IBM PowerHA ensures smooth high availability cluster. However, if the no. of days the failover happened in a year is within 10, then there is no need to buy Oracle licenses for the secondary server. If such failovers exceed 10 in a year, then Oracle license need to be purchased for the secondary server as well. This will potentially lead to huge financial impact. IBM may provide an option to switch from "automatic failover" to "manual failover" option if the no. of failovers in a year reached 6 or 7. This will avoid the risk of the automatic failover exceeding 10 in a year if the system administrator fails to make note of the no. of failovers in a year and maintain it within 10. Read https://www.oracle.com/assets/data-recovery-licensing-070587.pdf to know more about the Oracle's 10-day failover licensing rule.
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For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution since Nov. 2019.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
PowerVM is very stable. After two years, we restarted the servers only once. In comparison, with the legacy SPARC servers, we used to restart the servers every month.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This solution is very scalable, so you can do a scale up and you can add more processes. It can also integrate with the cloud, which is good.
How are customer service and support?
IBM delivered the servers, storage and backup solution well ahead of committed delivery time especially when there was a time constraint and IBM was given only 8 weeks delivery period. IBM completed the migration of mission critical Oracle ERP system successfully with lesser downtime than stipulated by us.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used Oracle SPARC M4000 servers. Since these servers were more than 8 years old and in view of impending end of support, we went in for a hardware refresh.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward as the same done by IBM labs experts.
What about the implementation team?
It was implemented by IBM Labs. I will rate their expertise on implementing IBM infrastructure for Oracle database, middleware and e-business suite ERP system as excellent. They implemented a full-fledged high availability with (1) PowerHA failover clustering and (2) Oracle Data Guard based disaster recovery
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If the servers run Oracle database and middleware software, careful attention needs to paid on the impact on on Oracle license cost while replacing the servers. If virtual machines are deployed, use only hard partitioning technology like IBM LPAR. Do not use soft partitioning technology like vmware, Microsoft Hyper-V etc. We made a 7-years TCO comparison to decide on solution provider (OEM).
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
IBM Power Servers and Oracle SPARC servers were evaluated. IBM offered flexibility in choosing the no. of cores and high scalability. Oracle offer very limited options in choosing the no. of cores / CPUs. For example, The Oracle SPARC T8-1 servers offered 32 cores as minimum and was becoming expensive for an environment that required only 16 cores of CPU capacity. But IBM offered highly configurable options in terms of the no. of cores like 16, 17, 18, or 19 cores etc. This flexibility in choosing the no. of cores is important since the expensive Oracle database and middleware licensing is based on no. of cores of CPU capacity. Oracle allows an option to cap the no. of cores to 16 in its SPARC T8-1 server. While this option may be helpful in controlling the Oracle software license cost, it leaves the remaining 16 cores of CPU capacity unused though the same has been paid for. The second reason for choosing IBM Power servers over Oracle SPARC servers was faster processor performance. In view of this faster performance of IBM Power processors, the Oracle database and middleware licensing cost per core of IBM Power server is twice the licensing cost per core of Oracle SPARC server. However, in our environment, the actual performance of IBM Power processor was more than twice as compared to Oracle SPARC processor and due to this the overall Oracle software cost on IBM Power server was lesser than that on Oracle SPARC server in our environment. As we were replacing aging SPARC servers, the migration downtime was lesser in case of RISC processor technology offered by IBM and Oracle as compared to X86 processor technology offered by HP and Dell. As cutting down the downtime was critical, HP and Dell options were not considered.
What other advice do I have?
I rate IBM Power servers a eight out of ten. IBM PowerVM offers options like dedicated hard partitioning (LPAR), capped partitioning and uncapped partitioning. Careful attention needs to paid while choosing the partitioning options available in Power servers. The hard partitioning (LPAR) option is critical to control Oracle database and middleware licensing costs. This is very important. IBM PowerHA is an automatic failover clustering software that helps to achieve high availability of mission critical software. However, since Oracle allows to use its database and middleware software free of cost on the secondary servers of Power HA cluster only for 10 days in a year, the no. of failovers in a year needs to be closely tracked if the automatic failover is configured. If smaller downtime is acceptable, it is advisable to configure manual failover instead of automatic failover of PowerHA cluster software.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.