We performed a comparison between IBM PowerVM and KVM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Server Virtualization Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"The feature that I like most is the versatility."
"It is a stable solution with reliable performance."
"The tool's performance is top-notch."
"It's in English, so its exceptional qualities make the control environment more flexible, easier, more stable, and easy to recover after issues."
"Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM."
"The stability is the most valuable aspect of this solution. IBM is the most powerful and stable platform."
"The case fileserver on the web server is the most valuable feature."
"The key aspect is that the KVM directly interacts with the Kronos. There's no clear indication of indirect communication with Kronos. It is not linked to Kronos, and interaction is straightforward without any intermediaries."
"I think nine out of the ten supercomputers in the world use Linux KVM, so I think that attests to the fact that it is a scalable product."
"KVM is stable."
"Documentation and problem-solving troubleshooting are the most valuable features. Performance (when fine-tuned and with "special" HW) is awesome, equal to or more than other enterprise closed-source solutions."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"The initial setup was simple."
"The solution should be advanced to fit with the container constantly."
"The program has very limited solutions for the virtualization of containers"
"IBM PowerVM could improve the price because it is expensive."
"SRM for site recovery is a feature that should be included."
"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."
"IBM PowerVM does not integrate with Microsoft."
"IBM should review the price of this solution in my opinion; it is too high."
"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."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"I have previously used VMware and KVM is easier to use. However, they both have their strengths depending on their use cases. They are mostly equal. One of VMware's advantages is it has better support."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
IBM PowerVM is ranked 9th in Server Virtualization Software with 25 reviews while KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews. IBM PowerVM is rated 8.4, while KVM is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM PowerVM writes "A stable system for high-end data processing with a great support structure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". IBM PowerVM is most compared with VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Oracle VM VirtualBox and Proxmox VE, whereas KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). See our IBM PowerVM vs. KVM report.
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