TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

IBM PowerVM

Score9.5 out of 10

26 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

What is IBM PowerVM?

IBM PowerVM provides a server virtualization environment.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features IBM PowerVM has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 26 ratings of IBM PowerVM's features
View all features

Top Performing Features

  • Live virtual machine migration

    Downtime minimization by migrating live vms between hosts and across clusters

    Category average: 7.7

  • Hypervisor-level security

    Hypervisor-level security including antivirus and anti-malware

    Category average: 8.2

  • Management console

    Management console for central administration of vm environment

    Category average: 7.9

Areas for Improvement

  • Live virtual machine backup

    Ability to backup vms without interrupting service

    Category average: 7.7

  • Virtual machine automated provisioning

    Automation of virtual machine provisioning through use of vm templates

    Category average: 7.6

Reviews

What users are saying about IBM PowerVM.
View all reviews

IBM PowerVM rocksolid virtualization for missioncritical workloads.

Lance MartincichView profile
Unix/Linux Systems Engineer in Information Technology at City of Cape Town (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM PowerVM is used a s the backend infrastructure for or mission critical SAP ECC6 systems. There is a mixture of Oracle Databases running on IBM AIX and SAP HANA Databases running on SLES and RHEL. One of the major problems addressed is system provisioning. With IBM PowerVM resources are used far more efficiently and systems are easily created. Management of over 300 virtual machines is efficient and moving resources between frames allows better resource utilisation and capacity planning. IBM PowerVM is scalable and reliable providing operation agility and modernisation. Our IBM PowerVM environment spans multiple IBM PowerVM models supporting Production, Development and QA workloads.

Pros

  • Virtual machine consolidation
  • Reliability and availability
  • Scalable
  • Flexible
  • Agile

Cons

  • The system management experience via the HMC can be improved. It is great right now but needs to be a bit more intuitive. It feels a bit dated compared to other virtual/cloud platforms.
  • Automation integration is sometimes difficult and tied to the operating system limitations. Better integration into platforms like Ansible Automation Platform would be beneficial.
  • Steep learning curve. This is a good thing but perhaps some defaults for system provisioning could be put in place or an AI bot to assist in system provisioning and management.
  • Fragmented system monitoring. There are tools provided but if they could be in a more centralised grafana style dashboard view to give a clear picture across HMC, VIO, Physicial and virtual adapters.

Return on Investment

  • Cost saving through consolidation. IBM PowerVM allows a really significant consolidation of workloads. Reduces the hardware footprint and DataCentre space required without sacrificing on performance and high availability.
  • Stable platform. IBM PowerVM is a highly stable and proven platform. It greatly reduces the risk of outages for mission critical workloads. This avoids the reputational and organisational costs associated with unplanned downtime.
  • Improved efficiency. IBM PowerVM is the base for our operational efficiency and standardisation. This allows operational teams to focus on delivery of solutions rather than routine platform maintenance.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Red Hat Satellite

Other Software Used

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), IBM Storage FlashSystem

IBM PowerVM boosts efficiency and usability of IBM Power systems!

Incentivized
Richard WesterikView profile
Principal engineer in Information Technology at Simac IT NL bv (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a cloud provider we use many IBM Power systems. They all come with IBM PowerVM built-in to provide virtualisation services. Together we have hundreds of partitions (virtual machines or LPARs as IBM calls them) running; we can dynamically change CPU- and memory allocation, move running workloads from one physical server to another etc. Also the Virtual I/O Servers provide each LPAR access to the physical network and to disks (LUNs) on the SAN. Redundant VIOS ensures high availability and the PowerVM firmware is robust, safe and highly efficient.

Pros

  • Changing resources for a VM on-the-fly, like adding CPU or memory to an LPAR, adding a virtual network interface, etc. But it is just as easy to remove (or reduce) resources, especially when running the AIX operating system.
  • Live Partition Mobility allows us to move LPARs from one physical system to another, without any downtime or noticeable impact on the LPAR. This allows us to balance loads, or vacate a physical machine in the event it needs downtime for maintenance.
  • Power Enterprise Pool 2.0 (also called Power Private Cloud with Shared Utility Capacity) allows you to buy a base capacity (CPU and memory) for a group of physical systems, all CPU and memory on these systems get activated. If the combined usage is less than base you pay nothing, excess usage (over the base) is metered by the minute and billed (or prepaid).
  • Even when you have a lot of partitions that are all consuming large amounts of CPU, nearing the total capacity of the physical machine, the overhead of IBM PowerVM is still pretty low, allowing processing in the LPARs to continue.

Cons

  • Each LPAR comes with a profile that sets a minimum, desired and maximum capacity (like for CPU). You can freely change the allocated CPU between the minimum and maximum on-the-fly. If you want to change the resource below the set minimum or above the set maximum, you need to shutdown the partition first and change the profile. It would be nice if there was a way to do that without downtime too.
  • (Setting the maximum very high is fine for CPU but not for memory as it allocates a fixed percentage of the maximum (not the current) size for internal housekeeping).
  • When you manage your Power system with an HMC, a lot of firmware updates can be done concurrent (on-the-fly), not requiring a power-cycle of the machine. If you use Novalink to manage your systems, this proces becomes broken and you need downtime on your physical system. You can use Live Partition Mobility to move every partition off of this system first, but still...

Return on Investment

  • IBM PowerVM allows us to keep our customers' AIX and Linux partitions running continuously. Concurrent firmware upgrades and Live Partition Mobility allow us to move customer workloads to different servers if needed. This supports happy customers.
  • The use of PEP2.0 can save significant money if you size your base capacity correctly. If you exceed the pools base capacity you pay, but if this doesn't happen too often, it will be much cheaper than activating (and paying) for adding CPU's to the base. So it can seriously save money, while still being able to handle unexpected peak loads.
  • Running AIX on an IBM Power system with IBM PowerVM is a solid combination: AIX can use all advanced features of IBM PowerVM and the hardware, developed by the same company, with single point of support etc. Linux certainly works great on any Power system, but new features of the platform are typically supported on AIX first.

Usability

Other Software Used

IBM AIX

IBM PowerVM the best vritualization solution on IBM Power Server

Incentivized
Naveen Sharma
Consultant in Information Technology at DCM Infotech Ltd (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are Using IBM PowerVM for virtualization in our organization. IBM PowerVM is used to virtualize the environment on IBM Power series hardware to utilize the hardware resources more efficiently. We are using a dual IBM PowerVM setup with the configuration of NPIV (for fiber port virtualization), SEA(for network virtualization), and VSCSI (for virtual SCSI) to host the multiple VMs on the same hardware in the environment.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • The IBM PowerVM works only on Power processors, it should be also available for Intel processors.
  • IBM PowerVM is still managed through the command line to perform administration tasks. IBM PowerVM needs to be managed through Graphical Interface so that users can perform the task more easily.
  • In IBM PowerVM, padmin and root commands are different for the same task. It's a bit confusing and difficult to remember.

Return on Investment

  • IBM PowerVM is the best solution for the big organization having critical applications. Return wise, it's the best product.
  • IBM PowerVM helps to save the application licensing cost by assigning one CPU to multiple virtual machines (micro-partitioning).
  • IBM PowerVM provides many good features like LPM, shared-processor pool ...etc which provides a lot of flexibility at the VM level and helps to save the hardware cost.

Alternatives Considered

VMware ESXi

Other Software Used

VMware ESXi, Kubernetes, Red Hat Cluster Suite

Power VM - a powerful tool for a multi tenant hosting environment

Incentivized
Verified User
Representative in Sales (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Power VM is the virtualization engine used for [the] IBM Power system [architectures]. It is used to create and maintain logical partitions for IBM i OS, AIX, and Red Hat Linux. This makes it a vital part of system design and [day-to-day] system management. Because it is used in a for sale production cloud it has a direct correlation to ongoing revenue for the organization.

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.

Cons

  • 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

Return on Investment

  • Allows for very quick and efficient host provisioning.
  • Extremely stable. Does not create any downtime.
  • Provides an excellent blend for IBM OS's[.]

Alternatives Considered

VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced

Other Software Used

IBM i, Syncsort Assure MIMIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

IBMs PowerVM powers up your IT infrastructure

Incentivized
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • IBM PowerVM is reliable and fully redundant with no single points of failure
  • Once it is set up, there is not a lot of maintenance that needs to be done on it
  • It gives you a lot flexibility by using features like LPM

Cons

  • While it does not happen often, when there is a problem it affects everything
  • The commands between padmin and root should be more in sync with each other
  • It can be tricky to set up at first

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.

Other Software Used

IBM AIX, IBM PowerHA SystemMirror, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)