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."We always recommend PowerVM to our customers; it is better than most solutions."
"IBM PowerVM's most valuable feature is stability."
"IBM PowerVM has the highest clock speed."
"The feature that I like most is the versatility."
"Technical support is great."
"It is a stable solution with reliable performance."
"It's in English, so its exceptional qualities make the control environment more flexible, easier, more stable, and easy to recover after issues."
"The valuable feature of the solution is the technical aspects, focusing on elements like processor infinity."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"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."
"The most helpful aspect of KVM is the fact that the interface is so minimal. It includes just what you need to set up the VMs and manage them, and it's very simple to do so."
"Very cost-effective."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"The initial setup was simple."
"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."
"I would like for IBM to be more focuses on the cloud."
"IBM should review the price of this solution in my opinion; it is too high."
"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."
"The solution should be advanced to fit with the container constantly."
"The performance should be improved."
"A GUI version of VIOS would be a great plus for people moving from Intel-based hypervisors."
"IBM PowerVM does not integrate with Microsoft."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The networking with wireless devices needs improvement."
"We are not getting good support from KVM, and it is not that user-friendly."
"I believe KVM offers a unified answer, while ProxMark addresses orchestration. KVM lacks orchestration. If the aim is to centrally oversee multiple KVMs – let's say to freeze them – a centralized management solution is absent."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
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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