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IBM PowerVM pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.3 out of 5

36 reviews
96% willing to recommend

2,323 followers

Pros & Cons summary

IBM PowerVM excels as a stable and versatile platform, providing excellent resource management with features like Active Memory Sharing and Live Partition Mobility. It offers limited OS compatibility and needs better integration with VMware vCenter. Though it performs well for database workloads, challenges include high costs and a lack of robust automation tools. Quick technical support and flexibility in hardware resource management are positively noted, but improvements in container virtualization and pricing are needed.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM PowerVM offers exceptional stability and reliability, making it a ten out of ten for performance and resource management.

The dynamic allocation of resources and Active Memory Sharing provide flexibility, optimizing workload management efficiently.

The hardware partitioning feature ensures compliance with Oracle licensing requirements, making IBM PowerVM ideal for robust licensing management.

IBM PowerVM excels with 99.999% availability and minimal downtime during maintenance, thanks to features like Live Partition Mobility.

Technical support for IBM PowerVM is highly praised for being responsive and effective in addressing queries quickly.

CONS

IBM PowerVM has limited solutions for virtualization of containers, which affects its adaptability to current market needs.

IBM should focus on cloud capabilities considering the industry's transition from on-premises to cloud and hybrid models.

The cost of IBM PowerVM is perceived as high when compared to other competitors, such as x86 servers.

Integration with competing platforms, especially Microsoft and aspects of VMware vCenter, is lacking, which impacts its management features.

IBM PowerVM's licensing model and pricing pose financial challenges, especially in regions like Argentina.

IBM PowerVM Pros review quotes

reviewer1752768

Chief Information Officer at a paper AND forest products with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 15, 2022

A valuable feature of PowerVM is a feature that is used for higher availability plus stream for posting, which is very useful. There's a flash copy feature which we are using. PowerVM itself, I know, helps us to control and manage our Oracle licensing compliance, since it is our hardware partitioning. This is very important. If you use VMware, there will be a licensing issue. This PowerVM is a hardware partitioner, which is very important for license compliance. We are happy with this solution.

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MN

Mohtashim Nomani

IT Manager at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 29, 2021

Technical support is great.

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Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

Oct 18, 2022

IBM PowerVM has the highest clock speed.

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Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

May 14, 2024

PowerVM is perhaps the only virtualization platform that offers 99.999% availability.

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Project Manager Cloud Infrastructure at Path Infotech ltd

Jan 10, 2024

Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM.

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Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

May 17, 2021

Active Memory Sharing dynamically reallocates memory of running partitions based on changing workload demands. The memory for the pool is carved out from Physical memory and is made logical memory. The said memory is not available to be assigned to partitions as dedicated memory. A min, max and desired as well as weight is assigned to the memory of each lpar to help hypervisor make a decision in case a condition where priority is to be given to a certain lapr to use the memory form shared pool.

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WA

Data Center Manager at Family-bank

Jun 6, 2024

It offers stability, resilience, and reliability. They handle the workloads very easily.

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Data Solution Architect at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe

Aug 2, 2020

It's scalable. Whenever we buy another product other than hardware, it's easily integrated into the virtualization software that we download.

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MR

Solution Sales Specialist at TD SYNNEX

Mar 27, 2025

I rate IBM PowerVM a ten out of ten for its capabilities in the cloud environment.

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AS

IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM

Jun 12, 2021

The most valuable features in this solution are you do not get degradation in the performance like you could get in other solutions. There is a physical adapter that is better than a virtual one and you can assign adapters to a VM.

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IBM PowerVM Cons review quotes

reviewer1752768

Chief Information Officer at a paper AND forest products with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 15, 2022

I don't know whether this has been trialed already, but IBM should give us an alert when we reach seven or eight failovers so that we can automatically switch it to manual mode. That would be great because if we cross the 10-day licensing limit, we have to pay a hefty license cost to Oracle. If IBM could view that feature, it would be helpful in license compliance.

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MN

Mohtashim Nomani

IT Manager at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 29, 2021

The licensing could be better.

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Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

Oct 18, 2022

The hardware licensing model could be improved because the licensing model is a bit different from the standard hardware procured.

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Free Report: IBM PowerVM Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM PowerVM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.

845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

May 14, 2024

It is solely command-line based.

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Project Manager Cloud Infrastructure at Path Infotech ltd

Jan 10, 2024

As understand it, IBM sells all its hardware to Lenovo, and only PCs servers are managed by IBM. It's uncertain how much longer IBM will continue in this way, especially with the current trend of transitioning from on-premises to cloud and hybrid models. The market is evolving. Given this market shift, it's essential to identify areas for improvement. IBM has introduced the PowerVM Series, including Linux, which is a positive step. However, customers are already moving towards x86 servers due to cost considerations. The cost of PowerVM compared to x86 servers appears to be a significant factor.

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Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

May 17, 2021

A GUI version of VIOS would be a great plus for people moving from Intel-based hypervisors.

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WA

Data Center Manager at Family-bank

Jun 6, 2024

The biggest challenge is the limited flexibility in operating system compatibility. PowerVM, for instance, supports only a select few operating systems, which can restrict the types of workloads deployed.

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Data Solution Architect at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe

Aug 2, 2020

If it could actually virtualize the entire platform it might be better. If you're having more than one virtualization technology, maybe there's a way to actually have less - one technology to run the data center and maybe one special virtualization for power. If it integrated with other platforms more effectively it might be better.

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AS

IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM

Jun 12, 2021

This solution is lacking the ability to have servers act as a cluster, such as in VMware. IBM has come out with a feature similar to VMware's vCenter but it is not as mature. They need to add LPM shared-nothing feature, such as in vMotion.

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Digital Platform Manager at Strategic Synergy Inc

Aug 20, 2024

In terms of the technology used in the product, I feel that there are some areas where improvements are required. The tool should offer better clustering options.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 32)

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