IBM PowerVM Reviews

IBM PowerVM is a stable operating system, and we haven't experienced any performance impact in AIX. It is very reliable. Currently, the main purpose for using it is customer migration to Linux or server consolidation based on their requirements. The market is changing with more customers shifting towards Linux.

Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM.       

As I understand it, IBM sells all its hardware to Lenovo, and only PCs servers are managed by IBM. It's uncertain how much longer IBM will continue in this way, especially with the current trend of transitioning from on-premises to cloud and hybrid models. The market is evolving.

Given this market shift, it's essential to identify areas for improvement. IBM has introduced the PowerVM Series, including Linux, which is a positive step. However, customers are already moving towards x86 servers due to cost considerations. The cost of PowerVM compared to x86 servers appears to be a significant factor.

I have been using IBM PowerVM for 8 years.

I would rate the stability of IBM PowerVM at eight out of ten, which means that it is very stable.

We work with clients ranging from small businesses to enterprises, primarily focusing on enterprise-level solutions. Regarding scalability, PowerVM's scalability is global and depends on the resources you add. You can extend it with additional boxes based on your requirements, but scalability is influenced by the type of server purchased. If you have a basic model, scalability might be limited. It depends on the investment made.

The support is satisfactory, but there are instances where the IBM team doesn't provide a solution. Additionally, in cases where customers have purchased hardware without a support subscription, there can be challenges, and engineers may direct to Google searches to address issues. Improvement in support is needed.

Neutral

PowerVM was the initial virtualization solution through Power BI, followed by VMware leading in virtualization. However, if you acquire a high-performance version of VMware and carefully configure CPU utilization, it can be comparable to PowerVM. Many customers are shifting to Linux with VMware.

There is a scarcity of engineers in the market with expertise in PowerVM servers. Finding skilled technical personnel is challenging, and there is a noticeable shift of interest from AIX to Linux among professionals, which makes the deployment difficult. 

The installation and configuration time vary based on the setup, ranging from one to two days for a single server to a week for more complex scenarios involving clusters or VM deployments.

Regarding maintenance, it depends on the availability of parts and skilled engineers. Finding suitable engineers in the market is difficult, and IBM may outsource maintenance tasks.

The pricing for PowerVM is on the higher side. Regarding the license, it can be on a monthly or annual basis, depending on the deal. Customers may choose to pay annually, one-time, or monthly based on their agreement with the sales team.

As for additional costs, customers need to pay for support if they opt for it. If not, they only pay for the hardware cost as per the agreement.

PowerVM currently only supports AIX and IBM Power Linux, excluding normal Linux. This could be improved to prevent customers from migrating to other systems.

I use the product for partitioning. My clients use it on different operating systems like Linux. 

The tool's most valuable feature is administration. 

The solution's interface needs to be integrated with messaging analysis. 

I have been using the tool for many years. 

IBM PowerVM's stability is very good.

My company has around 1,000 users for the tool. 

IBM PowerVM's customer service is good. 

Positive

IBM PowerVM's deployment is easy and takes two hours to complete if you plan the numbers and partition. Sometimes, we need to make upgrades. However, it's not a big deal. The public information and the use of IBM resources are enough for us.

IBM PowerVM's pricing is cheap. 

My customers are happy to buy the product since they have a stable system. I rate the overall product a ten out of ten. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for coding systems and applications. IBM PowerVM has a separate market segment for systems and servers. It has Intel systems and Power Systems. Intel-based or RISC and CISC-based systems are generic. The standard system is CISC-based, so it's a Compact Instruction Set of Computers. In contrast, Power Systems, which we usually procure, is RISC-based, a Reduced Instruction Set system.

Power Systems has a separate market segment regarding systems or servers. So you have Intel systems, and you have Power Systems. Intel-based or RISC and CISC-based are very generic. The standard system you get is CISC-based systems, so it's a Compact Instruction Set of Computers, whereas Power Systems that we usually procure are RISC-based, which is a Reduced Instruction Set system.

Primarily, they differ in the way they process data. Secondly, we have a workload requiring higher clock speed, so when we buy a processor, we look at multiple things. First, we look at how much clock speed the processor gives, which means the power for a single thread of the processor to process data. So let's say you have two processors, one with one gigahertz of thread speed and a second with 40 hertz. The 40 hertz is going to work four times faster when it is processing data. So clock speed is what matters. So when we need higher clock speeds, which means we have heavily dependent or heavy threads or multiple applications with heavy threads, we go for systems with higher clock speeds, and in that case, IBM PowerVM has the highest clock speed up till now.

Secondly, when you need higher memory bandwidth, data travel from disc to memory and from memory to processor for processing. So if the road connecting your disc with your memory and your professor is more comprehensive, you can track and send multiple higher traffic. The other important factor is that in use cases where you need higher bandwidth, throughput from memory is where you should use IBM PowerVM.

And third, IBM PowerVM has a higher cache processor. So when the data is processed in a processor, it must first travel to the cache. There are multiple levels, levels 1, 2, 3, and so on. So you will need higher cache memory, which means fewer round trips from memory to processor and cache. It means faster performance. So you procure IBM PowerVM or systems alike. We deploy the solution on-premises.

The only problem with the IBM system is improving its hardware licensing model. For example, when you procure a server with 40 physical codes, you must also procure licenses to activate the codes. In Dell or any system, you procure the hardware and have the full right to use the hardware. For IBM, it's different because when you procure a 40-code processor and have 40 physical codes, you only have a license to use 20. As a result, the 20 alert codes will always be in activated mode. Hence, the hardware licensing model could be improved because the licensing model is a bit different from the standard hardware procured.

We have been using this solution for approximately two years.

IBM PowerVM Systems are one of the most stable systems for high-end data processing.

The solution is scalable. We currently have more than 1,000 people using our applications on our IBM PowerVM Systems.

IBM has a very good support structure. Once you have an IBM machine, experts from your local country or region can help you if you have any issues. So as far as IBM support is concerned, based on the contract you have of the code, their response time is phenomenal, and they usually are exceptionally equipped with what they need to do. So if the support engineer assigned to you does not understand your problem, there is a tag team member from within the region who can come in and help you out.

There are two parts to the initial setup. If you have procured IBM, you will start services with the server, which is pretty straightforward. IBM mounts the system and installs it to your satisfaction, and if you do not procure the smooth, soft services with an IBM machine, you will have to start from scratch, which will be problematic. You need to know about BIOS and other underlying technologies to do it right. I rate the initial setup ten out of ten.

The price overall of IBM PowerVM is much higher than an Intel machine. So if you can buy an Intel machine for $100,000, a machine of the exact specification, it will cost you around $300,000.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is very good, but the operation and management features could be improved to make it user-friendly.

The clients use it as a backup system for high availability and disaster recovery.

It is a reliable system with 99.9% uptime. The live operational ability is there. 

Nothing, it’s almost perfect.

I have been working with this solution for 20 years or so. 

It's a stable product. I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

It's a scalable product. When you need additional processors or disks, you can easily add them and continue to work.

I have one customer using this solution. It's scalable, so you can easily add anything you want. This solution handles large-scale virtual machine deployments and management well.

IBM technical support is always good and quick. We can quickly get a response and solution.

I work on IBM Power Systems, PowerVM, and MIMIX which is high-availability solution. I am not working on Linux, but IBM Power Systems can run Linux.

The initial setup is easy, with a good interface, easy access, and easy configuration.

Very easy setup. In a few minutes, you have a running system. 

It's in a secure place, and users can easily access it. It's much more scalable than a physical system on users' premises because they can easily add disks, memory, and processors. 

Users can safely take the backups, and they have an available system. Users can reach it from anywhere, and it's secure and easily scalable. Administration is easy.

Users can easily add licenses and solutions, and users can select from the administration menu. 

Users can easily select the functions or solutions they want to add and start using them.

Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten. It looks very good now. Users can start using it in a few minutes, so it's very easy to set up and very easy to use. It's secure and scalable. It's a very good choice.

We use IBM PowerVM primarily for creating dynamic partitions. We utilize the same physical machine for multiple partitions, dynamically moving resources between them based on performance needs. We have moved from using HISMB to Oracle RAC.

PowerVM is straightforward and reliable, especially for ARM backup and storage purposes as it allows for efficient database backups.

The most valuable feature of PowerVM is the dynamic allocation of resources. It allows us to move resources on the fly without needing to bounce applications or servers.

Currently, all the necessary features are working fine for us. However, technical support could be improved, especially when seeking solutions to issues.

I have been working with PowerVM for over 20 years.

PowerVM is very stable. I would rate its stability a ten out of ten.

The scalability of PowerVM is excellent. I would rate it above nine out of ten since you can scale on the fly.

Customer support for PowerVM systems is good, yet there is room for improvement regarding TSM support.

Positive

In addition to PowerVM, we use Veeam backup for its user-friendly features, and the ability to cover various platforms, yet Tivoli is more reliable for database backups.

The initial setup is straightforward. With the latest versions, you can create partitions with a single click, unlike older methods that were more complex.

Implementation involves IBM GPM people for new services, and they work with us during the implementation.

PowerVM is expensive but worth the investment for the reliability and performance it offers.

We integrate with various solutions like Teleo, Salesforce, and others, however, for database and major applications, we rely on IBM solutions.

PowerVM is highly recommended for its performance and reliability, especially for critical systems.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company or our banking sectors, so it is used for our banking customers and for their core banking systems. Most of the critical systems use IBM PowerVM.

In terms of the technology used in the product, I feel that there are some areas where improvements are required. The tool should offer better clustering options.

I have been using IBM PowerVM for fifteen years. My company operates as a systems integrator company. My company has a partnership with IBM and VMware.

My company provides technical support, so in terms of IBM PowerVM, we are technically equipped. At the same time, IBM also offers support for PowerVM. The support is easily reachable.

I have worked with VMware. I don't think there is a direct comparison between VMware and IBM. Mostly for VMware, it's Windows Linux workload on Intel. For IBM PowerVM, critical applications run on AX and IBM i. Basically, the tool is for critical applications.

VMware offers better clustering options compared to IBM PowerVM.

The product's deployment phase is straightforward since my company has been doing that for the longest time.

For a simple environment, the solution can be deployed in one to two days, but for a complex environment, it takes one to two weeks.

I cannot say there's an impact in terms of cost efficiency since it is more on the reliability side. On the cost side, the tool offers more through lesser downtime or lesser need for maintenance, and that has probably impacted the cost of the tool for the customers.

The tool is competitively priced, especially right now. It is not only the IBM PowerVM you purchase but also the hardware since, in terms of compatibility, they are built for each other.

In terms of reliability, IBM PowerVM is one of the best tools. The tool offers a reliable virtualization technology.

The most beneficial part of the product for system scalability revolves around the area of LPARs and IBM PowerHA.

Most of the time, our customers don't use the tool's live partition mobility to streamline operations because the system rarely goes down. If our customers need to move to another tool, they can just switch to a disaster recovery site.

I have faced no challenges in managing multiple virtual machines with IBM PowerVM. Most of our customers have, like, less than ten virtual machines or LPARs, so managing them is fairly simple.

So far, there has been no focus on the AI part in areas like software or the database. The AI part is new in the Philippines, so we don't have any use cases related to it at the moment.

I recommend IBM PowerVM to others, especially for critical applications. I would not recommend the tool to startup companies or those who can just move to the cloud.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We have been using this solution since Nov. 2019. 

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. 

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. 

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.

Positive

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. 

Initial setup was straightforward as the same done by IBM labs experts.

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

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).

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. 

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.

As a consultant, I primarily use IBM PowerVM for solutions related to SAP and Oracle.

The valuable feature of the solution is the technical aspects, focusing on elements like processor infinity. This involves automatically assigning resources and setting priorities. For instance, specific processes can be prioritized over others, ensuring that higher-priority tasks can utilize resources from lower-priority systems in case of limited resources.

SRM for site recovery is a feature that should be included. The only missing element is the disaster recovery tooling.

I have been using the solution for the past 20 years.

The solution is stable. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is scalable, and all my customers using it are enterprises.

The support is great.

Positive

The initial setup is quite straightforward, using standard deployment tools. Automation is possible. While I'm more focused on planning as an architect, the setup can typically be completed within a few hours, often ready for use by lunchtime after the deployment request is made in the morning.

The solution is expensive. You have to usually purchase the hardware and acquire licenses for a specific portion. This includes some room for inbox growth. Additionally, you need to buy all the necessary software and maintenance on top of that.

If you have enterprise requirements and seek a stable platform, IBM proves to be a suitable choice for overall enterprise solutions. Overall, I rate it a nine out of ten.