We spent two weeks on the deployment process. The first three days were dedicated to allowing the team to acclimate to the data center. The IBM team took care of the initial setup, including firmware updates on the servers, while we handled assigning IP addresses. Once those tasks were completed, we were able to access the system network and begin creating virtual machines based on specific requirements from different units. A team of five people consisting of the administrator, network administrator, storage administrator, IT operational person, and power and data center administrator was required for the deployment.

The deployment depends on customer requirements. There are various factors that can determine if it will be a simple deployment or difficult deployment. IBM Power Systems gives us a certified engineer, that usually comes through your domain and implements the systems. There are a few best practices that you need to follow. If you are an IBM customer or IBM person or an IBM engineer, then you follow those specific guidelines.

Sometimes the customer's requirements are simple so the deployment is simple but sometimes they have a lot of requirements. 

It takes around seven days to deploy it. 

The initial setup was very easy to set up. It's not a complex process. 

We have our own installation and deployment team for IBM. They handle all aspects of it so that the client doesn't have to worry about the technical side.

You must consolidate and consider with other stakeholders regarding implementing IBM Power Systems.

The initial setup is easy. There's nothing great in it. With the help of IBM, one can do the setup.

The initial setup is not complex. You just connect it to the systems, the PCs, and all the laptops before starting.

It definitely requires more expertise than x86 systems, especially considering the importance of reliability and availability for our clients' banking solutions.

So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup a seven out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is simple.

The hardware installation itself is quick, but migrating data from old systems or integrating new solutions can take time. Usually, it's anywhere from a few weeks to a month or two, depending on the complexity of the application being migrated. Usually, a team of three to four people is needed.

IBM Power is a bit complicated to set up compared to Intel-based hypervisors. 

The product's initial setup phase is done with the channel or server connection channel. The setup is using CLI. For Oracle's setup phase, my company uses a web-based GUI, so management and configuration are very easy. IBM offers old technologies.

The initial setup of the product is complex. In our company, we had an instructor from IBM who told us IBM prefers to make the setup phase difficult. In other platforms, the deployment phase can be completed with a few clicks, but with IBM, you need to do a lot of steps even though the end result may not be as good as you expected.

The initial setup is complex for the machine setup potion. 

Setup was a non-issue. The upgrades are complex, but it's easy to figure out what you have to do.

The initial setup wasn't complex at all. We were familiar with how the systems are and the system that we wanted to install. The shifting from an older generation, an older server, to the new server wasn't done, actually. We had a freshly installed active directory. We improved the structure during the shifting phases. The only thing that we actually did for deployment was that we had the deployment imaging ready when we did it, and we customized it based on a virtual machine.

When we installed the virtual machine, we did the testing to scale the deployment prior to the arrival of the servers, and then we did the installation directly. We had everything ready. The only thing that we shifted was the user data from the old server to the new server. That took a while. Other than that, the deployment was straightforward.

Hardware upgrades, now that we're with our virtualization, is pretty simple. We just LPM from one to the other. 

The software is a little more complex than I think it should be. I think there is some stuff that they could do with the patch bundles. They call it a patch bundle, but really it's not a bundle. There are a bunch of patches there, and you have to do an MGET and get all of them at once instead of it being one tar bundle, and you just download that tar bundle and then untar it. Then you have them. If your LTP fails during the download, it's like, "Well I didn't get them all, so, which one did I get?" Let me just erase everything and restart. 

I'd rather just grab a tarball and untar it and that way I'd have the readme right there in that uncompressed location. 

It's some of the stuff that they have like their VIO, I just downloaded the VIO DVD one, DVD two; I think it's the expanded tool kit. They're all compressed differently. One is a raw ISO, one is a compressed ISO, and the other one was a gzip tar file. I'm thinking, "Why aren't they all the same?"

Some of that gets a little irritating but you just have to deal with it and, hopefully, somebody will realize it and fix it.

I'm not a good person to ask. This is what I do. To me it's easy, I think it's easy to learn. I think the one problem new people have is - and this isn't just something that relates to IBM - the phraseology is different. So something in VMware might mean something different in the Power world. The lingo, there's some new jargon, and new acronyms that you have to learn. But once you get around that, you realize this thing is the same as this other thing on another system; just a different word.

The solution’s initial setup was complex.

The initial setup took us time because we migrated from a legacy to a power system. The migration took us about one week. The OEM IBM provided the consultant that did the installation.

The initial setup is very straightforward - we migrated one bank in three days. The software is also 100% record compatible, so we don't have to think about compatibility and worry that older things won't work.

I would say pretty straightforward.

The setup of IBM Power Systems is easy because I have experience with it before. The full deployment took approximately four months.

I haven't had any experience in that. Normally we get a P7 box and it runs P7 forever; and we get a P8 box, and it runs P8.

The big version releases, as far as 5 to 6, and 6 to 7 were complicated. All the point releases were fairly straightforward.

In terms of upgrades, we've gone through multiple iterations. It was complex, but it was intuitive. We have an AIX team. They were able to upgrade the environment. Stand up the new environment. We were able to use LPM to migrate the load over from the old POWER7 to POWER8. It worked pretty well.

The installation is very simple. 

From the installer, you install the machine. Maybe you want to install the operating system. It's quite different from Windows or Linux since this is Unix-based.

Upgrading the hardware from one version to another was pretty simple but the software, not so much.

It was pretty straightforward. I have been doing this a long time, so it is pretty straightforward for me. There are more hardware things now that I've moved to external storage. It does become a little more complex there.

The initial setup is not straightforward. It's quite complex, especially for those implementing it for the first time. While it will never be simple, per se, it does get easier the more setups you end up performing.

A non-tech person would simply not be able to handle the implementation. You will need someone that's knowledgable.

Not just the implementation, but the registration, and many other parts of the deployment take a rather long time. It's not a quick process. If we're just talking about the installation with servers, you are looking at four or five days right there. However, if you factor in migration or other administrations, you are looking at a one to three-month deployment timeframe.

Straightforward.

I feel upgrades are straightforward, especially the AIX upgrades. Because, unlike with Windows, you have all the small fix packs, most of the time you're either doing a major TL or a service pack. I feel that that is much easier than having to go through doing all of the small pieces.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup because we have an SME who does that and I'm just an engineer at the back end. I do the operations support, so that's where I come into the picture.

Regarding upgrades they're generally pretty straightforward. We use NIM to do our upgrades. All you do is create your new lpp_source SPOT and, if you're going from version to version, use nimadm and alt disk - you've got it covered.

We have a Linux team does all the Linux, but we're working with them to help them install the Linux.

Thanks to the labs, the migration from POWER7 to POWER8 was easy.

Setup was straightforward, with the help of the professional services from IBM. Maintenance is handled by the IBM team, especially the hardware.

The difficulty of the initial setup depends. If you talk to someone coming from VMware or Hyper-V, they will find it a bit complex, but if you talk to someone from Linux, they will find it a bit different initially, but with time it becomes very simple and easy to understand. 

IBM Power Systems has some tools, like power VC that is a private cloud on-prem. That allows you to do the whole deployment automatically via a very easy web-based user interface. 

The time it takes to deploy depends on how many virtual machines you need to run, the overall complexity of the solution, and if migrations are involved. The initial deployment can take around five days which includes the initial physical installation in the data center. Then the physical integration with the network, the transfer switches, and the storage is the customer infrastructure. After that, we configure the virtualization. If we configure a single little part, it would usually take you around five days.

As far as the infrastructure is concerned, a single person can deploy it. If the person deploying only has experience with Power Systems and does not have storage skills, you will need someone from the storage team as well to do the deployment. 

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. It's not complex. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation. 

In terms of maintenance, we have a large staff, however, that's necessary due to the fact that we support so many clients. You need an administrator and it depends on how many clients you have, how many administrators you need. For a lot of our clients, we sell them one of these servers, and then we do all the work for them. We install it and then we do the administration. You need the appropriate administrators when you have this product. Small clients may need one administrator, whereas larger ones might need three or four.

I am into sales, and I don't implement Power Systems. Based on the experience of our technical team, the initial set up usually goes smoothly. The issue comes only while migrating from the old one to the new one. For the whole migration, which included the initial setup and testing, it took at least six months.

It was pretty straightforward. The partition mobility helps a lot.

The solution does not require any maintenance. 

The initial setup is very easy - you just power it on, and it's ready to work in an hour.

Regarding upgrades it's a tricky game. It's a complex thing, because in our environment when something is running smoothly we don't want to stop it or give it downtime. We try to keep it running as long as we can. So in this way we sometime miss the upgrades, we don't upgrade it. But we are now focusing on the upgrades in a timely manner, rather than waiting for years and years. We are working on that.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You just connect the cables.

Straightforward, as are the upgrades.

It was complex. We had IBM lab services come do it for us rather than our business partner, and it went well.

I would classify the initial setup as medium. It took approximately one day to deploy IBM power systems. Everyone on the team had their role, so I can't speak about what each person did.

In terms of the upgrade from different versions, I think after we got past the jump from Syst ARIS, back in the day; and then, when we went from versions like 6 to 7, or 5.4 to 6, those were the really tough versions. 

Now, the version upgrades are very smooth.

It's straightforward, it is very simple.

The upgrade from POWER6 was really, really simple. We upgraded the operating system and just did a backup and a restore, or a backup off the old hardware, restore onto the new.

It's not as easy as clicking boxes and setting up Windows. You have to actually do a lot of pre-planning, a lot of figuring out whats your workload is, what your footprint is, your memory size.

You can get a person who has never seen it before to be able to do it themselves. With the cloud offering, it's point and click, literally. The resources are there. They tell it what they want, where they want it, how much they want, and click, they have a machine.

I don't think we know IBM initial setup because we have some colleagues working for a long time and they have much experience with this kind of set up.

It was straightforward.

Hardware migrations: logical partition mobility. Move it right onto the next platform.

Software x updates are pretty straightforward. I don't have much experience with i. And Linux is Linux.

The implementation is straightforward.

The initial setup is not complex. It's not quite easy, but with the service support it's quite easy.

With AIX it takes between two and six hours to prepare the platform for a new environment for the production stage and once the initial environment has been set up it is quite easy because you can replicate it or modify it according to your new requirements.

In terms of upgrades, if you compare it with other platforms, it's very straightforward. It's very easy and the documentation is very clear with everything that you have to take into account.

The initial setup is a little bit complex. You need to have some technical knowledge to set up the system and interfaces. The deployment took about eight hours. 

The implementation strategy depends on the strategy of IBM and our enterprise.

Very straightforward. The field engineers usually come in and place the hardware on the floor and install it, and we take it from there. 

The setup is really straightforward, it's not that complex.