IBM Turbonomic Reviews

We love the custom dashboards. We use them on the TV above our desks and it helps us keep an eye on the environment.

We no longer have to worry about our hosts being over/under provisioned. Turbonomic just evaluates the VMs and moves them for us. It's one less thing that we have to worry about.

Continued development for Hyper-V and additional storage vendor integration too.

We have had the solution for about a year.

We didn't have any issues with deployment.

We did see a few issues on a previous version with reporting. However, their support team was great and had a solution from the developers quickly.

We have not had any issues with scalability.

Customer service has been excellent. We did a very lengthy PoC and they were always willing to answer questions quickly and to offer up ideas about how to tackle issues in our environment.

Technical support has also been excellent. Any time we have a question or concern, we always get a quick and thorough response. We don't dread calling for help like with other solutions we have.

We didn't have a previous solution in place.

The install was very straightforward. I don't think it took more than an hour to implement.

The implementation was in-house.

I don't have numbers at this time for ROI, but I do know that we have been able to utilize our hosts more efficiently, and that's huge.

The solution was well worth the cost for us. It allows our admins to function on the other pieces of our environment.

We didn't evaluate any other options.

If you want to keep a detailed eye on your environment, and also pass off some of the administration to automation, Turbonomic is a great reliable platform for you.

Automating the resource balancing. It let's us know when we need another host to keep things running smooth and fast.

It forced us to organize and standardize our storage environment - making smaller, generic datastores that had an unintended benefit of making the backups faster.

The interface could be a little cleaner and navigation a little easier. (note: this has improved in version upgrades since I first wrote this review!)

3 years.

No. We did have to clean up our storage before allowing it to make automatic decisions on storage commodities.

Never.

No.

The folks at Turbonomic love what they do and it shines through. I have never had a bad encounter with anyone there. They are very responsive to any needs we have and have even called to do a health check-up!

Excellent. I needed help one time upgrading to the latest version and installing our own branding and the tech walked me through both things in 10 minutes!

No. We looked at several and no one is in their league!

We had no problems and the installation folks were there just in case they were needed.

In-house.

You could take the number of hours per tech that no longer has to administer and babysit machines and resources, add the money saved by maximizing the hardware you have to its fullest potential, then add the labor saved in forecasting and the product pays for itself in the first year easily!

It is worth every penny you spend on it. Also, you can "deny" it from seeing hosts and environments that you don't want managed (ie DEV).

Yes. I remember Foglight being a long distant second.

I like to say "Set it and forget it". It has never made a bad decision. It obeys all rules you have in place in VMware. The reporting is fantastic and the forecasting has made the budgeting nightmare much easier in this area.

Like the rest of us, you will be hesitant to turn on "automagic" provisioning but you will be wondering why it took you so long to do so shortly after!

Automation and reporting.

Prior to using Operations Manager I spent a considerable amount of time evaluating VM placement. I found myself shuffling VMs between hosts on a regular basis. The automation feature of Operations Manager monitors performance and migrates VMs between hosts as needed. It has been saved me a considerable amount of time.

The product is administered using a web based interface. This interface was written in Adobe's Flash product which requires the Adobe Flash plugin to be installed on any device accessing it. Flash has had multiple security problems over the past several years and is a product I like to avoid. In addition, it's not available for mobile devices. Attempting to administer Turbonomic Operations Manager via a mobile device, like a phone or tablet, is impossible due to the Flash requirement. I would love to see this interface rewritten in HTML5. Someone from Turbonomic told me this was coming, but that was awhile ago and it still isn't here.

Over 3 years.

No. Working with Turbonomic is incredible. The company is probably the biggest reason I initially selected this product over a competitor. When requesting a trial Turbonomic arranges a meeting where they install the product in your environment and provide you with an overview of how it works. The product was deployed perfectly by a well Turbonomics employee who knew the product well.

I've been using the product for several years and have not encountered any problems relating to product bugs.

Excellent. I can't say enough about the quality of this company. For example, A few months ago our Turbonomic rep discovered I wasn't familiar with a specific feature of this product. He arranged a one to one phone appointment with a tech to teach me.

Excellent. I have only opened a relatively small number of support cases over the years I've used this product. Each case was handled quickly.

It was a simple deployment, but was done by a Turbonomic employee when our initial 30 day trial began.

Turbonomic performed the implementation. The initial setup was done fairly quickly by a very competent tech.

We looked briefly at VMware Operations Manager. We selected Turbonomic Operation Manager because of the features and level of support obtained from the company.

• Automated move and workload placement.
• Resource planning.

Planning for capacity is much easier now. With this setup we were able to get specific reporting and it allows us to acquire the necessary hardware in time to meet the demand.

• Additional options in data and report views.
• We would also like to see expansion made in the UCS tools that they provide, to allow viewing the entire UCS environment and not just the equipment that hosts a hypervisor.

3+ years.

No, the solution was easy to implement.

Once we were effected with one of the releases to generate the monthly report which was fixed with a post release upgrade.

None.

Excellent.

Excellent.

None.

The setup was simple, with the deployment of a virtual appliance. Updates are similarly easy.

In-house with the help of their Technical Support team.

Our ROI occurred in less than 6 months by allowing us to avoid a costly server upgrade that was planned for parts of our VMware infrastructure.

We have easily saved extra cost after optimizing resources with VMturbo.

We have primarily used the automation features of the product to right size the VMs and migrate the VMs to best use the resources we have available.

It allows our small team manage a larger infrastructure because we can focus our efforts in other areas.

It does not fully understand our DR/SRM (active/standby) infrastructure as we have hosts with nothing on them. When running some reports the numbers are off.

5+ years

None.

Excellent.  They have gone out of their way to make sure we are happy with the product.  They have helped us make the system work for us, not against us.

Many free solutions over the years.  Needed something actively developed and reliable.

In-house deployment.

Foglight, VeeamOne, Solarwinds, Xangati

Having longer historical trending on resources has given us insight to our growth potential over the next few years.  This allows us to better budget our needs.

Dashboard. Quick way to monitor the vCenter.

Improve Overall efficiency dashboard has identified resource consumption by individual VM's either to much or not enough.

Tuning VM's to the correct resource consumption, memory or CPU, has provided a true snapshot of the environments "foot print". This has aided in the correct sizing of physical machines needed to support the environment.

Definitions/descriptions of what each chart means. The line graph looks good, but doesn't mean anything without prior knowledge of what a "good UI" number is for example. I have a server with host UI of 26.7, both desired and current. I guess that is good. I see the definition of what UI is, but I'm not sure what to do if I'm not running optimal. I let Turbonomic suggest, and optimize, but still have double digit UI.

2 years

I was told to use the Chrome or Firefox browser because it works better. I don't know if that has been fixed with the later versions of both Turbonomic and Internet Explorer. I still use Chrome to use this product.

None noted.

I rate customer service as a 10/10. I've not had any issues when dealing with support or sales team.

Technical support has aided me one time, and I am totally satisfied. Quick and correct resolution.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Tech support aided in the install, and then provided training. The install and setup is straightforward.

VMturbo support/presales team installed via remote desktop.

VMware Operations Manager.

The Turbonomic solution works/performs as advertised. It automatically removes a large workload in the day to day care of my virtual environment.

For us, the monitoring features, as well as the right-sizing recommendations and reports have been the most valuable.

It helps us stay on top of the health of our virtual infrastructure, make near-real-time decisions on how to fine-tune and adjust our infrastructure, and lets us be proactive in our approach.

The appliance interface doesn’t list the features/capabilities that licenses can be purchased for, so unless you were directly involved in the negotiations. Purchasing of the appliance, there is no way to tell what feature set you have. An example would be the network control module. There’s no way to tell, just from looking at the interface, whether or not that module is included/activated/licensed. It would be nice if the UI included a break-down of features that are both licensed as well as un-licensed. That way, you could not only see what you have, but what you don't.
Also, the right-sizing recommendations are great, but very little info is given about why the recommendation is being made. More info would not only increase understanding, but would help drive decision-making.

We have been using Turbonomic since 2013.

Deployment was nice and smooth.

None.

None.

The customer service folks have always been polite and professional.

On the few occasions that we've had to contact support, it's always been good. We haven't ever sat on hold for extended periods of time, and have always been satisfied with the abilities of the representatives.

We did not.

It was a standard OVA deployment with just a few configs to get set up.

We deployed in-house.

Turbonomic is a good value for the money, and they've always been fantastic to work with.

We did not eval other options, as there weren't that many to choose from, and Turbonomic was the most attractive.

Capacity planning

Auto load balance recommendations, always keeps our VMware cluster optimized.

GUI interface is not as slick as VMware.

Two years.

Very easy deployment, very light virtual appliance.

No issues.

No issues.

Excellent.

Excellent.

vCOPS, at the time vCOPS did not have auto load balance.

Straightforward.

Was able to do it myself with very little vendor help. Startup package is include with purchase.

Very affordable compared to VMware.

Yes, VMware was an option.