IBM PowerVM vs. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) vs. Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)

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

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

RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.

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

• 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

• RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon.
• Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel.
• OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control.

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

• 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

• 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
• 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
• 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
• 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
• 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.

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

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

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

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

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

RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!

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

• 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

• RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances.
• We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp.
• There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor.

Incentivized