Avocent Data Center Planner vs. BMC Helix Continuous Optimization vs. IBM Turbonomic

Avocent Data Center Planner is well suited in helping us to capacity plan our data center, increase operations efficiency and keep track of available patch and switch ports. We are able to visually view wherein our data centers are underutilized and more importantly over-utilized. We can also follow the path of the cross-connects from one object to another visually providing us another troubleshooting tool in our datacenter. Previously we had Excel spreadsheets with this information and it's can be confusing to follow compared to a visual representation that Avocent Data Center Planner provides.

Incentivized

Based on what we have experienced, BMC Helix Optimize is a good choice for businesses that already have other BMC tools, such as BMC Helix Operations Management or BMC Helix Cloud Cost, due to the integrated capabilities that can be leveraged. Besides, it is a great tool for visual analysis of costs associated with operations.

Incentivized

Datacenter Consolidation and Hardware Optimization: This scenario is relevant to you as a hardware manager. It applies when you have physical servers (like Power or System z) and want to maximize virtual machine density. Why it works: IBM Turbonomic analyzes the peak usage times of each VM. If VM "A" is active during the day and VM "B" at night, it places them on the same physical host. Ideal scenario: Data migration projects or when you're told, "[...], there's no budget for more servers this year, make everything fit on what we have." Consolidación de Datacenters y Optimización de Hardware,Este escenario te toca de cerca como encargado de Hardware. Cuando tienes servidores físicos (como los Power o System z) y quieres maximizar la densidad de máquinas virtuales.Por qué funciona: IBM Turbonomic analiza las horas pico de cada VM. Si la VM "A" es activa de día y la VM "B" de noche, las coloca en el mismo host físico.Escenario ideal: Proyectos de migración de datos o cuando te dicen: "[...], no hay presupuesto para más servidores este año, haz que quepa todo en lo que tenemos". This review was originally written in Spanish and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.

Incentivized

• Avocent Data Center Planner gave us an overview of our data center without the need to be physically there to perform an audit.
• We can visually map out and trace the cross-connect a device or server is using without a need of remote hands to trace the cable.
• It provides us the ability to capacity plan our data center. Giving us the ability to see what space is under or over-utilized and formulate a plan to adjust to correct it.

Incentivized

• Graphical Representations.
• Building of Data Views.
• Planning of operational budgets based on performance.

Incentivized

• Presentation is nice. Its easy to understand what your looking at and the data that is being presented to you.
• Properly identify resource utilization and recommendations for action on how VMs can be improved and resources can be better utilized.
• It was also able to tell us the same information and analysis for cloud resources. I was not expecting that.

Incentivized

• The library of objects we can use in Avocent Data Center Planner needs to be expanded. There are times the server object we need is not available in the library.
• A more efficient way to connect objects together. It's way too easy to delete a connection mapping, a dialogue box asking if the connection should be deleted would be nice. I've accidentally deleted a connection before and it's annoying that I need to redo it.
• The ability to import diagrams into Avocent Data Center Planner would be nice. We have Visio diagram of racks and to utilize that instead of recreating it would help speed up the build in of a datacenter in the product.

Incentivized

• No mobile app is available.
• Only available in English.
• Not many data integrations available.

Incentivized

• 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.
• 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 also help drive decision-making.

Incentivized

We are certainly happy with Turbonomic as a whole and have invested quite a bit of time and effort into learning the ins and outs of the product. We have our reporting setup the way we want it and have gained definite value from these features. I will say though that many products nowadays are offering more native monitoring, reporting, and alerting features which may eventually steer us away from this product

Incentivized

Excellent approach to larger VM organizational management. They have an very clean integrated dashboard that allows us to see everything in our environment and what that is doing in real-time. It works on multiple hyper-visors really well and integrates capacity planning on my local site as well as my cloud locations.

Incentivized

VMTurbo has not caused any outages by not doing what we expect it to do.

Incentivized

It allocates resources among applications by showing more on the cost breakdown by cloud service, with metrics on cloud provider information like Azure Management, Identity, Networking, Storage with costs per day, and total services costs. This then could facilitate and show the corresponding actions thereafter upon scaling.

Incentivized

When I contact support I get a quick response and they are able to solve my problem quickly. I also get a sense that they want to make sure that we are getting value from the product and walk me through whatever steps are needed to accomplish my goals.

Incentivized

Alex (from VMTurbo) has worked with the product for years and helped develop the product. He was very knowledgeable and was able to provide our support team with details knowledge on how to get our deployment configured correctly as well as help with another VMTurbo POC within another customers environment.

Incentivized

After buying VMTurbo Operations Manager, I was invited to an online user training event. I felt this training was effective and dug just deep enough to be informative yet still keep my attention. Additionally, the webinar was free.

Incentivized

The implementation was very simple. Just upload an OVA file and power on the VM. Once it comes up enter some networking information and you can then access the web interface. From there, just begin configuring the system for your environment by adding you license and the various virtual environments and storage through the inventory tab

Incentivized

Avocent Data Center Planner was far and away better than utilizing Microsoft Visio to manage our data center infrastructure. It provides us a centralized location for all information about our data center from the location of racks, to the devices in them, the device connections, etc. While Microsoft Visio can emulate the rack and device piece of Avocent Data Center Planner, it can't replicate its ability to provide the device connections. We have previously used Excel for that. Having one place for all of that information is also a plus for Avocent Data Center Planner, increasing the efficiency of our data center operations compared to using Microsoft Visio.

Incentivized

In general, BMC Helix Optimize has a set of tools that are quite advanced compared to other technologies in the same field. Especially the visual representations and the flexibility when building rules to control the spend are some of the most useful functionalities that work quite well, usually better than in the rest of the tools.

Incentivized

As the organization had experience of years in using IBM products, we had the confidence that they will provide us with great support. And we needed a reliable solution as a financial institute to ensure continuous operations. Even though the price was very high, we made the correct decision to go ahead with IBM Turbonomic as the feedback from existing users in the region was very positive. We needed a solution which was capable of handling our automation requirements. All these were green in IBM Turbonomic.

Incentivized

It’s very scalable.

Incentivized

Professional services were always there to guide us in our transformation to the cloud. They understood our business model and then were able to provide guidance on what we needed from the tool.

Incentivized

• A positive ROI on Avocent Data Center Planner allows us to improve our infrastructure planning by giving a visual representation of our data center so we can see where we can set up new equipment in the future.
• Another positive ROI is, we can visualize wherein our data center we are either over-utilized or underutilized increasing the efficiency of our operations.
• A further positive ROI is the complete record of device connections eliminated the need for remote hands to trace patch connections for troubleshooting purposes.
• Finally having one place to view information on our data center is also a positive ROI. This has increased our operations' ability to manage our data center.
• A negative ROI is the amount of time required to set up Avocent Data Center Planner. We had to start from scratch and recreate the Visio diagrams we already had.

Incentivized

• Good ROI after optimizing redundant processes.
• Identification of issues when being able to represent data visually.
• Reduced costs due to limiting number of needed resources.

Incentivized

• Application performance has been a big one. With Turbonomic keeping everything running at top performance, it can make changes when extra resources are need, quicker than somebody being notified and then making the necessary changes.
• Turbonomic has been a great cost savings for us on multiple occasions. We use it every time we are improving servers.
• With the planning feature we get the best performance form new hardware purchases

Incentivized