Virtualization offers obvious benefits in terms of flexibility and the ability to run tens, or even hundreds, of virtualized systems in one box. But the actual performance of virtualized systems has been more difficult to pin down.
In response to this problem, VMware, a company specializing in virtualization technology, has released VMmark. VMware claims that this is the first benchmark specifically designed for virtualized software.
VMmark measures the performance of applications running in virtualized environments. But the company admits it has been no easy job to find an accurate way to come up with a standard benchmark that accurately represents the enormous variety of customer environments running on virtualized systems. It has taken "two years of engineering design, collaboration with partners and review of extensive customer survey data" to develop the benchmark, the company says.
In order to produce the benchmark, VMware has avoided the relatively easy approach of measuring the performance of virtual applications software running on specific machines. Instead, the benchmark measures the scalability of heterogeneous virtualized workloads. According to VMware: "It provides a consistent methodology so benchmark results can be compared across different virtualization platforms."
The result is that, by using the benchmark, companies should be able to "make appropriate hardware choices, and compare the performance and scalability of different virtualization platforms", VMware says.
AMD, Dell, HP and Novell have endorsed the benchmark. "We are pleased VMware chose Suse Linux Enterprise Server as part of this standardized virtualzsation benchmark," said Holger Dyroff, vice president of Suse Linux Enterprise product management at Novell.
VMmark is available purely on x86 servers. It requires 2 CPUs, 6GB of RAM, 80GB of disk space and a gigabit-capable Ethernet network adapter to run. OS requirements include Windows SP1 Enterprise Edition (32-bit) Virtual Server or Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 (32-bit).
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