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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Power

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe IBM Power product line is a family of servers.N/A

    KVM

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AKernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization solution developed by small Israeli software company Qumranet and supported by Red Hat since that company's acquisition in 2008.N/A
    Pricing
    IBM PowerKVM
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM PowerKVM
    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 PowerKVM
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Red Hat
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    165 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    154 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    171 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    147 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    160 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    IBM PowerKVM
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of IBM Power and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    Feature
    IBM Power
    -
    Ratings
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.05 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings9.04 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM PowerKVM
    Small Businesses
    Dell PowerEdge
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Dell PowerEdge
    Score7.6 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Z
    Score9.4 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM PowerKVM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (208 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.5
    (4 ratings)
    10.0
    (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 PowerKVM
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    KVM is the best solution in the case you need to test and turn up any virtual environment with limited vCPU/RAM resources. The obvious area of its use is a network environment when we want to avoid being tied to one type of hardware/vendor and being able to swap from one instance to another with no downtimes. The use of a vSwitch (that supports VLAN tagging) is a significant bonus for network engineers that some other hypervisors do not provide.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • KVM is really good at providing fast and reliable virtualization for Linux guests
    • Since KVM is a kernel module, every VM is a Linux process which can be managed by Linux system tools
    • KVM integrates very well with the management framework libvirt, which is why KVM can be integrated in automation tools as well
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface
    • KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle
    • KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    It does the job and stays out of the way. The specifics of usability relies on the implementation, but with things like Icarus and libvirt, things are standardizing nicely.
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    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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    Red Hat
    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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    It is a very reliable solution that can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with low overhead. It is a free and open source software. Easy to use withOpenStack.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • Fast provisioning of new servers.
    • Huge drop of the cost of servers compared to bare metal.
    • Easy upgrades of resources, sometimes now even requiring a server restart.
    Incentivized
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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