Azure Virtual Machines vs. IBM Power servers

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Virtual Machines
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Virtual Machines (VMs) are available on Microsoft Azure, providing what is built as a low-cost, per-second compute service, available via Windows or Linux.
$0
Per Hour
IBM Power servers
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
The IBM Power product line is a family of servers.N/A
Pricing
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Editions & Modules
3 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0038
Per Hour
Spot - General Purpose - Av2
$0.005
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0059
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Burstable VMs - B1S
$0.0075
Per Hour
Spot - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0104
Per Hour
Spot - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0125
Per Hour
Spot - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.016
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0307
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0369
Per Hour
3 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.0481
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.05
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.0548
Per Hour
1 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.0753
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
$0.0846
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - General Purpose - Dv3
$0.096
Per Hour
Pay as You Go - Memory Optimized - Ev3
$0.126
Per Hour
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Azure Virtual Machines
8.6
23 Ratings
3% above category average
IBM Power servers
-
Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning9.123 Ratings00 Ratings
Management console8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup9.019 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration8.616 Ratings00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security8.616 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Small Businesses
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE
Score 9.3 out of 10
Dell PowerEdge R
Dell PowerEdge R
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
HPE ProLiant DL
HPE ProLiant DL
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
IBM Z
IBM Z
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(23 ratings)
9.0
(208 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(7 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Virtual MachinesIBM Power servers
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
If you want to host a dedicated Windows server on the cloud, and especially if you want to integrate it with your on premises Active Directory, Azure Virtual Machines should be your first choice. Obviously running Linux on Azure works very well too, but given Azure's pricing is not the cheapest, there are other providers out there that have a better cost-benefit ratio for Linux. That said, hosting Windows on Azure can be affordable (especially when compared to other providers) if you plan your licensing, topology, and application architecture correctly.
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IBM
I'd strongly recommend IBM Power servers to anyone who has the budget for it. A Power Virtual Machine, what is generally called FlexTB VM, can support as many small VM of 256GB, and scale up to 32TB on the fly. If IBM recommended architecture is combined with your organizational reference architecture, then forget about running into unplanned downtimes.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • When demand is high, we scale the service out, eg During a Football Match.
  • When a football match is over and the throughput of data from OPTA drops we save by the service scaling back in.
  • Our App Service Plans along with the Clean C# code are lightening fast giving a good customer experience.
  • When producing the TV Guide information and a program overruns its scheduled time, a client can instantly be updated to the new programming schedule as our change is instant and its in the right place for all the clients to download and adjust their television guides appropriately to send out to the public giving a 24x7 uptime service that is precise and accurate and resilient to outages due to failover zones around the world.
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IBM
  • I love how it supports a mix of operating systems
  • protection of our sensitive energy data and ensuring compliance with industry regulations.
  • It provides a flexibility that ensures that we can accommodate increased workloads without a complete overhaul of our infrastructure.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Pricing can be a concern if you are truly agnostic to which cloud you are building your particular solution in.
  • The UI, as is the case with any cloud provider, is crowded.
  • As with any cloud provider, it can be difficult to tune in exactly the right amount of servers for your needs...you might find yourself under/overprovisioning.
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IBM
  • A solid IDE for editing programs. SEU was simple and solid. Then it became outdated and support for it ended as the language continued to evolve. That's fine. But RDi is expensive and shaky at best, and VS Code, while free, is severely lacking even the modicum of features RDi has.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
This is one of the best systems on the market. You can have Flash/Copy which created another LPAR to look like the system you are copying. This takes seconds and not minutes. Then you can use BRNS to do full system backups nightly with no downtime. I am ready for us to upgrade to a Power 10.
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Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
They are very easy to set up and use once you re knowledgeable enough to deal with it. They are continuously enhance the user experience on the HMC and operations on the systems. Once setup it's like a beast, going on and on. I have experience with servers that are not being rebooted for more than 1000 days
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
In all of the years I have used various Power System, I have never had any problems at all. Even when hackers were attacking our email servers and many users PCs, the IBM Power System came out completely unscathed. I haven't even had any application errors that were able to take the system down. Nor have I ever experienced an unplanned outage
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Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
The IBM Power System is built for integration. It supports multiple operating systems and you can run multiple OS's on the same box with no problems at all. It also supports a number of open source languages such as PHP, Java, Python, and Perl which helps you continue to grow and integrate with lots of other systems.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
I give the overall support for Azure Virtual Machines a 7 because I think while the overall support do a great job there are still areas that it could improve on such as efficiency and speed. So while I only give it a 7 and it has some issues it is still better than the overall support at Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.
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IBM
On large-scale systems, the rating would have been 10. However, I have seen some cases in more rural areas where the IBM onsite support is not as available or of the highest quality as in the past. For software support, there are sometimes instances of language barriers.
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
Systems are robust and you need to know exactly what your are going to do with them. There are multiple configurations possible and you need to gather your requirements first, before going on with the implementation. Tuning is a must before migrating production systems
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Azure Virtual Machines offer unparalleled flexibility in provisioning, managing and upgrading the VM instances, both manually and programmatically. AVM offer very granular billing options and enables high costs optimisations (while still being costly). The other competitors I mentioned are very good at offering dead-cheap VMs. But if you need anything beyond that, especially for big computing, you need Azure Virtual Machines.
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IBM
Power server do not need a stack of software for viruses, spam and others... Power server do not need to have release often power server are much more strong then other manufacturer Power server do not need to restart offen
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
This system can work in a small factory with a few users and easily scale out to thousands of users. It is truly amazing on how much you can throw at this box and it will just keep humming. It is great for use across multiple departments and even across multiple corporations. I worked at one company where we were hosting multiple corporations on just one large Power System and had ZERO problems.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • It's so easy to spin up new instances, that it becomes also to easy to have to many of them to manage. Many teams end up with a couple of hundreds of VMs after a short while, making the whole thing very hard to maneuver
  • Azure VMs are the next step for us to rely on Onprem servers, and leaving the management of the infrastructure to the professionals
  • The ease of use, is also important when our main focus is to deliver new applications and integrations fast, and not having to worry about infrastructure. We sell bottles, not CPUs
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IBM
  • In the event of a crash, IBM Power servers offer a variety of simple options to recover the operating system.
  • With the flexibility offered by IBM Power servers, the production business can be improved by making the most of its physical servers.
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