ControlUp vs. IBM Turbonomic

An environment where visibility of general performance metrics isn't currently done or is done with a system that is difficult to use (which was our case). An environment where resource allocation decisions need to be made (e.g. how much RAM and CPU to allocate to VM pools). An environment where a troubleshooting tool is needed (e.g. to answer the question, "Why is this person experiencing poor performance right now?")

Measure the usage of resources across different platforms, from Kubernetes to VMs on-premises or in the cloud, to obtain current capacity metrics and plan for future scenarios. Reduce IT infrastructure costs by taking automated actions based on resource underutilization, such as shutting down VMs or changing resource definitions.

Incentivized

• The triggers are very flexible and can be configured to alert on things from events in sessions to hardware failures. Script actions are what they sound like. They are scripts that can be created and run on demand or tied to a trigger. One example is that if a hard drive is low on space we have a script to clean up certain things on the drive.
• Script actions are supported by the ControlUp community. Community members can submit scripts that are reviewed by ControlUp and approved. This means more script are added over time.
• ControlUp support and sales support has been great. Our sales engineer is always willing to jump on and help us with configuration issues and standard support is quick to respond and are good at resolving issues.

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

• It seems that there is a gradual transition occurring from one interface (a local program) to another (Web). This creates confusion at times.
• ScoutBees module has a problem with our version of Horizon, so we can't do a login test
• The local program for ControlUp uses a lot of resources
• The training session focus on very large environments, which we aren't. Might be good to offer SMB sessions separately.

• 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

I feel all these products are good and have their strengths but for me it came down to two categories. How easy is it to find issues and cost. It seemed to me that the easiest to use is ControlUp and eG. Price broke down to ControlUp and SysTrack being lower than Goliath and eG.

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

• its licensing cost is a bit on high

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