Monthly Archives: December 2010

Performance Scaling of an Entry-Level Cluster

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Performance benchmarking is often conducted on top-of-the-line hardware, including hosts that typically have a large number of cores, maximum memory, and the fastest disks available. Hardware of this caliber is not always accessible to small or medium-sized businesses with modest IT budgets. As part of our ongoing investigation of different ways to benchmark the cloud Read more...

Oracle RAC Performance on vSphere 4.1

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Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) is used to run critical databases with stringent performance requirements. A series of tests recently were run in the VMware performance lab to determine how an Oracle RAC database performs when running on vSphere. The test results showed that the application performed within 11 to 13 percent of physical when Read more...

Two Host Matched-Pair Scaling Utilizing VMmark 2

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As mentioned in Bruce’s previous blog, VMmark 2.0 has been released.  With its release we can now begin to benchmark an enterprise-class cloud platform in entirely new and interesting ways.  VMmark 2 is based on a multi-host configuration that includes bursty application and infrastructure workloads to drive load against a cluster.  VMmark 2 allows for Read more...

VMware Load-Based Teaming (LBT) Performance

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Virtualized data center environments are often characterized by a variety as well as a sheer number of traffic flows whose network demands often fluctuate widely and unpredictably. Provisioning a fixed-network capacity for these traffic flows can result either in poor performance (by under provisioning) or waste valuable capital (by over provisioning). NIC teaming in vSphere Read more...

Performance and Use Cases of VMware DirectPath I/O for Networking

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Summary VMware DirectPath I/O is a technology, available from vSphere 4.0 and higher that leverages hardware support (Intel VT-d and AMD-Vi) to allow guests to directly access hardware devices. In the case of networking, a VM with DirectPath I/O can directly access the physical NIC instead of using an emulated (vlance, e1000) or a para-virtualized Read more...

VMmark 2.0 Release

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VMmark 2.0, VMware’s next-generation multi-host virtualization benchmark, is now generally available here. We were motivated to create VMmark 2.0 by the revolutionary advancements in virtualization since VMmark 1.0 was conceived. The rapid pace of innovation in both the hypervisor and the hardware has quickly transformed datacenters by enabling easier virtualization of heavy and bursty workloads Read more...