No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Turbonomic pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.4 out of 5

205 reviews
98% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

IBM Turbonomic provides automated data center management and optimizes cloud operations, leading to significant cost savings, notably in Azure. It automates VM sizing across ESXi hosts, delivers notifications on cluster utilization, and integrates AI for intelligent automation. Reports and monitoring need improvement, with limited integration for customized apps. The licensing model can raise costs, and upgrades are complex, requiring new setups. Despite this, it remains a strong tool for resource management.

Buyer's Guide

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

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM Turbonomic provides hands-off management for equalizing data center usage, improving efficiency and saving human resources.

The tool offers automated right-sizing of VMs and vMotion across ESXi hosts, significantly reducing performance bottlenecks and enabling better resource utilization.

Proactive monitoring and optimization of cloud operations with 40% savings are attributed to proper VM sizing, avoiding unnecessary expenditure.

IBM Turbonomic enhances application performance optimization and streamlines IT processes, reducing manual intervention and saving substantial time.

IBM Turbonomic's AI and machine learning features, along with predictive capabilities, offer effective decision-making and automation, improving infrastructure efficiency.

CONS

IBM Turbonomic's reporting lacks detailed graphical output suitable for executive presentations.

There is no straightforward upgrade path between major versions, leading to data loss.

The tool can be overly aggressive in resource management, sometimes reallocating resources incorrectly.

Integration with other monitoring software like AppDynamics is limited, affecting application monitoring.

The automation features pose risks with certain systems, such as Windows Server, causing potential instability.

IBM Turbonomic Pros review quotes

reviewer1446966

Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 21, 2022

I like Turbonomic's built-in reporting. It provides a ton of information out of the box, so I don't have to build panels for the monthly summaries and other reports I need to present to management. We get better performance and bottleneck reporting from this than we do from our older EMC software.

Read full review

reviewer1112556

Senior Director of Middleware Hosting Technology at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Feb 19, 2025

I like Turbonomic's automation and AI machine learning features. It shows you what it can do, but it can also act on recommendations automatically. Integration with an APM system makes the AI/ML features truly effective. Understanding what the application is doing and the trends of application behavior can help you make real-world decisions and act on that information.

Read full review

Infrastructure Engineer 4 at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 6, 2024

On-premises, one advantage I find particularly appealing is the ability to create policies for automatic CPU and memory scaling based on demand.

Read full review

Free Report: IBM Turbonomic Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Turbonomic. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.

AD

Vice President at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 1, 2023

I like the analytics that help us optimize compatibility. Whereas Azure Advisor tells us what we have to do, Turbonomic has automation which actually does those things. That means we don't have to be present to get them done and simplifies our IT engineers' jobs.

Read full review

Nicholas Diesel

Solution Architect DC at Natilik

Feb 5, 2024

It is a good holistic platform that is easy to use. It works pretty well.

Read full review

reviewer2339589

Senior Member of Tech Staff at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 31, 2024

Rightsizing is valuable. Its recommendations are pretty good.

Read full review

reviewer2249175

Senior Manager Solution Architecture at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Jul 18, 2023

My favorite part of the solution is the automation scheduling. Being able to choose when actions happen, and how they happen...

Read full review

reviewer2225052

Specialist at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Jun 29, 2023

The notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature.

Read full review

MK

Ict Infrastructure Team Cloud Engineer at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 20, 2025

The tool provides the ability to look at the consumption utilization over a period of time and determine if we need to change that resource allocation based on the actual workload consumption, as opposed to how IT has configured it. Therefore, we have come to realize that a lot of our workloads are overprovisioned, and we are spending more money in the public cloud than we need to.

Read full review

Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 10, 2022

The most valuable features are the cluster utilization reports and the resource capacity planning. We can simulate how much capacity we can add to the current resources. The individual DM reports and VM-facing recommendations report are also helpful.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 184)

IBM Turbonomic Cons review quotes

reviewer1446966

Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 21, 2022

The management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens.

Read full review

reviewer1112556

Senior Director of Middleware Hosting Technology at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Feb 19, 2025

We're still evaluating the solution, so I don't know enough about what I don't know. They've done a lot over the years. I used Turbonomics six or seven years ago before IBM bought them. They've matured a lot since then.

Read full review

Infrastructure Engineer 4 at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 6, 2024

Turbonomic can modernize the look and feel, making it more user-friendly to access and obtain information.

Read full review

Free Report: IBM Turbonomic Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Turbonomic. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.

AD

Vice President at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 1, 2023

If they would educate their customers to understand the latest updates, that would help customers... Also, there are a lot of features that are not available in Turbonomic. For example, PaaS component optimization and automation are still in the development phase.

Read full review

Nicholas Diesel

Solution Architect DC at Natilik

Feb 5, 2024

It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well.

Read full review

reviewer2339589

Senior Member of Tech Staff at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 31, 2024

I would like Turbonomic to add more services, especially in the cloud area. I have already told them this. They can add Azure NetApp Files. They can add Azure Blob storage. They have already added Azure App service, but they can do more.

Read full review

reviewer2249175

Senior Manager Solution Architecture at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Jul 18, 2023

We don't use Turbonomic for FinOps and part of the reason is its cost reporting. The reporting could be much more robust and, if that were the case, I could pitch it for FinOps.

Read full review

reviewer2225052

Specialist at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Jun 29, 2023

Before IBM bought it, the support was fantastic. After IBM bought it, the support became very disappointing.

Read full review

MK

Ict Infrastructure Team Cloud Engineer at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 20, 2025

There is an opportunity for improvement with some of Turbonomic's permissions internally for role-based access control. We would like the ability to come up with some customized permissions or scope permissions a bit differently than the product provides.

Read full review

Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 10, 2022

The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 184)

Related questions

87

What is the difference between cognitive RPA and RPA?

50

When evaluating AIOps, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?

155

What are the main storage requirements to support Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning applications?

435

What is Cognitive Cybersecurity and what is it used for?

82

What does XOps mean? How does a big company adopt it?

88

What is the impact of using AI and ML by HR vendors?

179

What are the top emerging trends in AI and ML in 2022?

53

What AIOps solution do you recommend?

140

Why is AIOps important for companies?