VMmark 3.0, VMware’s multi-host virtualization benchmark is generally available here. VMmark3 is a free cluster-level benchmark that measures the performance, scalability, and power of virtualization platforms.
Note: VMmark 3.1 is available—this release contains the features of VMware 3.0 and adds support for persistent memory, improves workload scalability, and better reflects secure customer environments by increasing side-channel vulnerability mitigation requirements. Visit the VMmark product page for more information. VMmark 3.0 reached end-of-life on March 15th, 2019.
VMmark3 leverages much of previous VMmark generations’ technologies and design. It continues to utilize a unique tile-based heterogeneous workload application design. It also deploys the platform-level workloads found in VMmark2 such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, and Clone & Deploy. In addition to incorporating new and updated application workloads and infrastructure operations, VMmark3 also introduces a new fully automated provisioning service that greatly reduces deployment complexity and time.
The VMmark3 Benchmark:
- Allows accurate and reliable benchmarking of virtual data center performance and power consumption of host and storage components.
- Allows heterogeneous workload comparisons between different virtualization platforms.
- Allows the analysis of changes in hardware, software, and configuration within virtualization environments.
VMmark3 Application Workloads:
- DVDstore3: The third generation DVDstore benchmark is a complete online e-commerce test application with a back-end database component, a web application tier, and driver programs. The application simulates users logging into a web server and browsing a catalog of products using basic queries. VMmark3 utilizes DVDstore3 with 4 virtual machines, 3 Apache web-tier VMs and 1 MySQL database VM. One of the web servers delivers a constant load to the database, while the other two deliver a cyclical load to generate a bursty profile.
- Weathervane: This is a highly scalable web application that contains a variety of support services working with a core application that simulates an online auction. Each VMmark3 tile contains two independent instances of the Weathervane Auction application, one static and one elastic, for a sum of 14 VMs (8 static and 6 elastic). The elastic workload mimics self-scaling applications by periodically adding and removing an application server and web server throughout the benchmark run.
- Standby: The standby server mimics a heartbeat server.
VMmark3 Infrastructure Operations:
- vMotion: This infrastructure operation live migrates one of the Weathervane Auction RabbitMQ VMs in a round-robin fashion to simulate modern sysadmin operations.
- Storage vMotion: For this operation, one of the Standby VMs is migrated to a user-specified maintenance partition and then, after a period of rest, returns to the original location.
- XvMotion: This operation simultaneously moves one of the DS3WebA VMs to an alternate host and maintenance partition. Similar to Storage vMotion, after a period of rest, the VM will return to its original location.
- Automated Load Balancing (DRS): VMmark requires that DRS be enabled and running to ensure typical rebalancing operations occur within the environment under test.
VMmark3 Provisioning Service:
- VMmark3 features a highly-automated setup and tile-creation process that makes benchmark deployment fast and easy, with little to no manual intervention. The entire process is seeded from a single OVA and can be utilized in an unattended mode for tile0 to N. VMmark3 uses CentOS-based free or open-source software throughout, eliminating the need for purchasing additional software licenses.
