IBM PowerVM vs. VMware vCenter

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM PowerVM
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM PowerVM provides a server virtualization environment.N/A
VMware vCenter
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
VMware vCenter is an advanced server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments for visibility across hybrid clouds. VMware vCenter is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.
$6,044
per year
Pricing
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
6,044
per year
Production
6,244
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Considered Both Products
IBM PowerVM
Chose IBM PowerVM
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 …
VMware vCenter

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM PowerVM
8.1
4 Ratings
3% below category average
VMware vCenter
-
Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Management console6.74 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration8.23 Ratings00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security9.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Small Businesses
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE
Score 9.3 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(4 ratings)
9.6
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM PowerVMVMware vCenter
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
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.
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VMware by Broadcom
The VMware vCenter server is very useful in maintaining the CPU/RAM/datastore resources are balanced when there are multiple ESX/ESXi host servers. It is clear what resources are being used, and it is easy to migrate VMs to different ESX/ESXi hosts. Being able to remotely connect to the VM servers in vCenter when you cannot have other remote connections helps in maintenance and troubleshooting.
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Pros
IBM
  • 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
VMware by Broadcom
  • VSAN storage management and redundancy - high performance IO with built in fault tolerance across the cluster, not reliant on a single hardware item
  • VM fault tolerance. The ability to relocate a running VM and restart VMs from failed or isolated nodes
  • Resource management and alerting. Tracking load across physical systems and allowing us to rebalance for better utilisation
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Cons
IBM
  • 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.
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VMware by Broadcom
  • Currently, the HTML 5-based vSphere Client lets you manage the essential functions of vSphere from any browser, however, it would be nice if they would port all management functions over to the HTML 5-based Client.
  • Performing updates and upgrades to the infrastructure is a bit challenging for someone that may not be as intimate with vSphere. I think the updates/upgrades should be more integrated into the UI and provide the ability to push to the hosts, etc...
  • It would also be nice to have a more robust snapshot management tool to prevent snapshot overgrowth. It would be nice to be able to set a lifespan for the snapshot(s)
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Likelihood to Renew
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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VMware by Broadcom
We are very dependent on this software, it has become a much needed tool to perform the daily tasks that are required to maintain the virtual server environment. VMware has become very pricey over the years, so we are looking for alternatives for cost savings strategy, but nothing has been found to be on par to what we are currently using
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Usability
IBM
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
VMware vCenter Server does a great job with maintaining your virtual environment. It has great role based features to delegate various administrative tasks to multiple users. It is an excellent 'all in one' dashboard for viewing all aspects of your vSphere infrastructure. All alerts to software and hardware issues are easy to trace from this interface
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Support Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
VMware support has always been fantastic and they have been invaluable in solving tougher issues that have been run into. Most of the time, any oddities encountered are fixed by available updates. This can be deduced by support quickly with logs within vCenter. We have not run into something yet that support was unable to help with. They either have a solution already, or they are able to find one quickly.
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Implementation Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
Since moving away from the Windows Server hosting the vCenter application and instead using a virtual appliance, it has become much easier to implement and deploy the new versions. We can easily create a snapshot or clone of the vCenter vApp to ensure any problems encountered during the upgrade can be mitigated with a fall back to the old version to prevent unscheduled downtime.
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
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.
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VMware by Broadcom
Citrix Xen Server.... Great Hypervisor but very limited in terms of functionality
MS Hyper-V... [VMware vCenter Server] is better for almost everything and appliance form makes a clear winner for security and ease of deployment
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Return on Investment
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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VMware by Broadcom
  • The positive impact of vcenter is definitely felt in larger organisations in terms of being able to manage multiple servers all in one environment
  • It will decrease the amount of time your server engineers will have to spend in the server room or datacenter.
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ScreenShots