IBM Power servers vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Power servers
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
The IBM Power product line is a family of servers.N/A
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution mainly used in commercial data centers.N/A
Pricing
IBM Power serversRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Power serversRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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 Power serversRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Considered Both Products
IBM Power servers
Chose IBM Power servers
For tier 1 clinical applications, there are generally two platform choices. AIX on Power and RHEL on VMwware or some other Hypervisor. When we purchased EPIC and Soft, AIX on Power was either the only option or the leading UNIX option. At the time Linux was not offered. Today …
Chose IBM Power servers
We always buy IBM Power/Aix systems for our business-critical applications, because we like to sleep sound at night. There's always Dell & HP for our VMware setup which runs a bunch of RHEL servers.
Chose IBM Power servers
It really depends on each client and what they have regarding hardware and software. If the client has a partnership with IBM or is using IBM software, usually they go with IBM hardware. If the client is a Dell partner, it usually goes with Dell hardware running Linux, and so on.
Chose IBM Power servers
When it comes to large-scale databases and applications, IBM Power servers are unbeatable. It is capable of handling the problem of a fine mistake and so aiding in its correction. It has a strong security system, which contributes to the safety of our company's computer …
Chose IBM Power servers
IBM Power system has great security features and rich storage of other vendor systems. Great processing capacity which easily manages the heavy workload with high processing speed.
Chose IBM Power servers
IBM Power system is best for organization well suited for SAP HANA applications IBM and Oracle. System has good quality availability and uptime. IBM POWER system has no comparison with other products that are using by organization. IBM Power server is IBM cant compare with other.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

No answer on this topic

Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
IBM Power serversRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Small Businesses
Dell PowerEdge R
Dell PowerEdge R
Score 8.6 out of 10
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
HPE ProLiant DL
HPE ProLiant DL
Score 7.3 out of 10
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Z
IBM Z
Score 9.3 out of 10
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Power serversRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(208 ratings)
9.6
(52 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(7 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.6
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(8 ratings)
8.5
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Power serversRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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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Red Hat
I guess to give it more context, my first job in the Linux ecosystem was in web hosting. And that was basically a Cintas shop and it was all run extremely lean and very bootstrappy do it on your own. You don't get any support. And for that environment, it was kind of just the way it is. It's very cutthroat. You have to move super fast. Once I moved over to the corporate side, every company I've worked with has been on rail. And the thing that really kind of makes it the best choice compared to using another operating system, another flavor of Linux and just kind of figuring out your own is the amount of support that Red Hat gives rail as far as extra tools like Satellite Insights and what's coming up now with Ansible and especially Ansible. Lightspeed, but also SLAs and stuff like that. Because yeah, I mean it was good learning in that first environment because there were no tickets, there was no support. It was figured out. But nowadays it's just nice to have an SLA agreement. I can just open a ticket. I say that that's something that does really well, but I also want to see it expanded, just more like vendor support at an enterprise level. I'm not sure yet what that would mean. I just have that every time we come up for renewal, I look at the price tag and it's like, what else can we do here? I like what Red Hat is doing just more.
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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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Red Hat
  • For us, it's going to be the deployment and the patching. It does a good job because you can put your no reboot tags and things like that because working with production systems and so we don't want them just rebooting suddenly because they were patched in the Linux world. So the non-reboot tags and the operating system deployment is the biggest thing we find that saves time and that's the biggest thing that we like. The tools. The tools that save time.
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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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Red Hat
  • From an automation perspective. RHEL is really moving forward, but some of their ideas are still not ideas, but their implementations of it still feel half-baked, like the functionality's there, but it's not the kind of functionality that to me makes it a full-on solution with OpenShift in particular as we're bringing this in and we're getting more into containers because it's more important for the banking industry and other industries. Justice General, well you can do this by script and we don't have an interface for this and sort of things sort of like that. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that RHEL does that bothers me as a general rule.
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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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Red Hat
We find RHEL to be a superior OS with stable operations and long life. It is also easier to use and fix then most other OS's.
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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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Red Hat
RHEL has most of the features that are required by an ERP solution. If you need any additional packages, RHEL has a great repository and a very easy package installation/upgrade process.
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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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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.
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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
Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.
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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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Red Hat
Don't be afraid of it, its easy to install and configure for the tasks needed.
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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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Red Hat
The biggest thing about RHEL that makes it stand out for enterprise users is the support that we get from the vendor. Whereas with the other ones, you're basically left on your own. There's no official repo, there's no satellite for patching. You're very left on your own with the community.
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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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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.
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Red Hat
  • Auditors are happy that we use an enterprise class distribution
  • Patch process is easy and fairly predictable
  • Information Security is fully satisfied with the speed of the fixing the errata and general state of the security patches, including the backporting process
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ScreenShots