IBM PowerVM provides a server virtualization environment.
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VMware vSphere
Score 9.2 out of 10
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An enterprise workload platform, vSphere is used to improve the performance for a data center. It is used to boost operational efficiency, supercharge workload performance, and accelerate innovation.
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.
vSphere is well suited for multiple VMWare hosts and can be very useful in larger enterprises where vMotion is used to load balance and failover running virtual machines. In smaller businesses with one or two hosts then the features can be overkill. The addition of virtual TPM support is a very nice addition to provide vm security in a more Microsoft supported methodology.
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.
More detail in recent tasks. Instead of just showing a task called "Reconfigure virtual machine" also have a link to more detailed information as to what was reconfigured, changed or removed.
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.
We are constantly looking for change that will benefit our company. We are not ones to stick with a product simply because it is what we know, but rather looking for what fits us best. We can't imagine another product on the market today doing a better job of handling our infrastructure than vSphere.
It is a highly documented suite. If you are unsure of how to do something, a simple search will yield hundreds of results showing you how to do it. Support is also available if you need to talk to an expert.
I rarely ever have to contact support and when I do need to resolve an issue, there is always an abundance of kb articles and research information available that can help quickly resolve the issue. Depending on the type of support contract you have, you may get support from some offshore group in another country and this could be a little challenging because of the language barrier.
Just make sure that when you implement, that the person implementing truly knows what they are doing and has a plan of action coming in. Since our initial implementation using a consulting service, I have implemented a few vSphere just from what I learned at the initial implementation and use over time, and the person implementing really needs to know what they are doing or you will miss out on features that may help you down the line
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.
vSphere has a lot more feature sets than Hyper-V but at a much higher cost of entry versus MS Hyper-V. I have not been able to play with Hyper-V as much as I would have liked, but the setup and ongoing maintenance seems to be easier in vSphere than with Hyper-V
The contract terms are very clear and can be updated as per the project requirement. Customer support is also included in the contract which help us to troubleshoot critical issues very easily. Training included in contract will really help the client team to empower and hands-on on the latest updates and enhancements
As I said earlier, they're always ready to understand our issues and propose the best and most appropriate solution for issues all the time. The security patches solution is accordingly to the business needs. Another scenario is their Knowledge Base where they're many articles that help you in order to solve something which is wrong.
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.
Having vSphere helped my business quickly recover from a ransomware attack which would have crippled us for weeks if we were not virtualized. I think the ROI on something like that is immeasurable.
vSphere has allowed my company to purchase bigger server hardware to host 3 or 4 virtual servers, which was at a cost much lower than buying 3 or 4 server hardware boxes, saving us thousands each time we need to upgrade hardware.
