DigitalOcean Droplets vs. IBM PowerVM

DigitalOcean Droplets are the best choice for developers teams that need reliable Linux servers to deploy their projects, the ability to create a droplet for testing purposes then destroy it, and only get charged for the few hours used makes the chances of messing up very slim. DigitalOcean Droplets is a great solution because the servers are scalable and the process of adding more resources like CPU or RAM to an existing droplet takes only a few minutes and once a server is scaled up it can also be scaled down if necessary which is perfect for supporting a temporary peak in traffic for example.

Incentivized

IBM PowerVM only is available on IBM POWER machines. It makes live much easier, compared to bare metal machines (OPAL) or machines with KVM. Personally I would not like to manage systems that don't have IBM PowerVM. The current line-up always includes IBM PowerVM (firmware built-in).

Incentivized

• Simplicity to scale services--the interface is very quick and effective to use
• Reliability--this is key for us, as any downtime effects our reputation
• Keeps the costs down--hosting our own equivalent infrastructure would cost a lot more

Incentivized

• IBM PowerVM is used for virtualization on IBM Power series hardware to utilize the hardware resources more efficiently like micro partitioning for CPU, NPIV for fibre port...etc
• IBM PowerVM provides the feature of live partitioning mobility (LPM), which allows moving the running virtual machine from one hardware to another hardware without any disruption on a virtual machine.
• IBM Power VM provides the feature of Integrated virtual manager (IVM), which helps to manage the single IBM Power hardware. There is no need to purchase a separate hardware management console to manage the Power hardware. This works well for small organizations having small environments.

Incentivized

• In terms of an availability zone, they have limitations not available in most of the geographical locations.
• No live support is available which can cause problem if you have outage.
• Number of service is quite limited.

Incentivized

• The ability to run Windows. Hardware architecture does not allow this, but it is a limiting factor.
• More performance monitoring and management could be built in.
• Sometimes is marketed and packaged in some rather unusual ways

Incentivized

The product works. It provides the proven environment to support IBM's primary operating systems that run on the IBM Power processing systems. This by extension includes the IBM various storage products that work within that environment. It has proven to be seamless as the environment has grown and as various new products and version updates have been added. As with most IBM products, the support is excellent.

Incentivized

Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward

Incentivized

Since it is built into the firmware (hardware) it requires no separate installation (except for the Virtual I/O servers, if you need those). Both HMC and Novalink (with PowerVC) support IBM PowerVM well and offer a user-friendly interface to setting up LPARs and making changes, most on the fly. Modern systems also give insights into performance, power consumption etc. A lot of separate tools exist to show more details, like LPAR2RRD, IBM Instana, IBM Turbonomic etc.

Incentivized

DigitalOcean Droplets is continuously evolving to be more and more powerful. It has great features and has low cost options, which is really great for developers. Its CDN, Loadbalancer, etc. make it a good place to host a high-traffic application. Moroever, DigitalOcean Droplets has a nonprofit program that helps nonprofit sites to run their infrastructure, which is tremendous and no competitor of DigitalOcean Droplets does that.

Incentivized

Our company utilizes VMware and PowerVM. VMware is very user friendly from an IT support view and makes supporting Windows OS easier. PowerVM is moving in that direction. PowerVM is better in that you can prioritize workloads across different VMs and be granular in your reservation of cores and virtual CPUs. PowerVM allows you to modify VM characteristics while the VM is up and running

Incentivized

• Digital Ocean has been great helping us move web apps to the cloud
• Digital Ocean has been really helpful when hiring contractors
• The interface could use some work, but overall its not terrible

Incentivized

• We are able to run several LPARs on one frame, which means we do not need to buy as many physical servers. That saves on floor space, power, and heating and cooling of the data center, among other things.
• Using LPM allows us to do maintenance on a frame without impacting the LPARs, giving us greater uptime.

Incentivized