IBM Power vs. IBM PowerVM

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Power
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The IBM Power product line is a family of servers.N/A
IBM PowerVM
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
IBM PowerVM provides a server virtualization environment.N/A
Pricing
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Considered Both Products
IBM Power
Chose IBM Power
The IBM power systems are really appreciable all the time, and there are many types of powerful servers, and all of the servers are unique. Each one has its own specialty. The big difference that we saw is about the latency itself, and it seems to be like all the other …
Chose IBM Power
Other vendor systems pale in comparison to the robust security and ample storage offered by the IBM Power System. Fast processing power that can handle a lot of work with ease and at a high rate of speed.
Chose IBM Power
In the evaluation phase, we work on servers with scope and sizes of databases and application by keeping future load in our mind if we have to run such databases we go through with multiple pocs and load run with softwares where we identified IBM servers are one of good in …
Chose IBM Power
Power 9 servers give better flexibility, reduces the software requirement, ease of management, minimum downtime
Chose IBM Power
We are an IBM shop, so we purchase servers only from them. I have used IBM servers starting back with POWER4, and have been greatly impressed with the advancement over the years in processing power and RAS capabilities.
IBM PowerVM

No answer on this topic

Features
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Power
-
Ratings
IBM PowerVM
8.6
5 Ratings
7% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.03 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Small Businesses
Dell PowerEdge
Dell PowerEdge
Score 9.0 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
HPE ProLiant DL
HPE ProLiant DL
Score 8.4 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Z
IBM Z
Score 9.4 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(208 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.2
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM PowerIBM PowerVM
Likelihood to Recommend
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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IBM
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).
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Pros
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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IBM
  • 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.
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Cons
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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IBM
  • 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
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Likelihood to Renew
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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IBM
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.
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Usability
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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IBM
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.
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Reliability and Availability
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Performance
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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IBM
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
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Scalability
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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IBM
  • 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.
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ScreenShots

IBM Power Screenshots

Screenshot of IBM Power E1180Screenshot of IBM Power E1150Screenshot of IBM Power S1124Screenshot of IBM Power S1122