Likelihood to Recommend IBM Power VM is well suited in a large environment where we have to run multiple virtual machines on a single hardware and utilize the hardware more efficiently. It directly saves the cost of the organization. Due to the high licensing cost of IBM Power VM, it's less appropriate for smaller, less critical applications that do not need a lot of performance.
Read full review K8s should be avoided - If your application works well without being converted into microservices-based architecture & fits correctly in a VM, needs less scaling, have a fixed traffic pattern then it is better to keep away from Kubernetes. Otherwise, the operational challenges & technical expertise will add a lot to the OPEX. Also, if you're the one who thinks that containers consume fewer resources as compared to VMs then this is not true. As soon as you convert your application to a microservice-based architecture, a lot of components will add up, shooting your resource consumption even higher than VMs so, please beware. Kubernetes is a good choice - When the application needs quick scaling, is already in microservice-based architecture, has no fixed traffic pattern, most of the employees already have desired skills.
Read full review Pros Offers a very granular virtualization of each core. Provides a quick and easy environment to build and maintain. Is rock solid and provides a reliable production environment. Read full review Complex cluster management can be done with simple commands with strong authentication and authorization schemes Exhaustive documentation and open community smoothens the learning process As a user a few concepts like pod, deployment and service are sufficient to go a long way Read full review Cons We have yet to upgrade VIOs from 2.2.0 to 2.2.3 which will provide the more GUI centric management, however, making the VIO servers easier to manage would be one area. I think this is done with the latest versions of HMC and PowerVM. More real-time and historical performance reporting. Read full review Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally. The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively. Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered IBM PowerVM is the best and most stable product in the virtualization market. It gives the best performance with IBM Power Server, especially its best solution, where we have to run critical applications and save applications licensing costs. It provides a lot of good features like LPM, shared processor pool...etc, which makes the environment more flexible.
Read full review Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Because of microservices, Kubernetes makes it easy to find the cost of each application easily. Like every new technology, initially, it took more resources to educate ourselves but over a period of time, I believe it's going to be worth it. Read full review ScreenShots