VMware VMmark 4.0 (available here) is a free cluster-level benchmark that measures the performance and scalability of enterprise virtualization environments.
VMmark 4 continues to leverage the design and architecture from previous generations of VMmark while providing enhanced automation and reporting. It utilizes a tile-based heterogenous workload application design that includes updated versions of several VMmark 3 application workloads while also adding new modern applications that more closely represent what is running in today’s enterprise virtualization environments. VMmark 4 also contains infrastructure workloads including vMotion, Storage vMotion, Cross vMotion, and Clone & Deploy. In addition to these prescriptive workloads, VMware vSphere DRS is also running within the cluster under test to balance the workloads across the cluster. With VMmark 4.0 we’ve continued to improve the fully automated provisioning process we introduced with VMmark 3, decreasing the time for users to get to valuable results. Most users will now be able to go from the downloadable VMmark template VM to VMmark 4 results in about two hours for a “Turbo” run.
The VMmark 4 Benchmark:
- Allows accurate and repeatable benchmarking of vSphere virtual datacenter performance.
- Utilizes a variety of traditional, legacy, and modern application workloads within a heterogenous tile-based approach.
- Facilitates the analysis and comparison of hardware, software, and configuration changes with VMware virtualization environments.
- Workload levels are significantly higher than previous VMmark releases to better represent today’s environments.
VMmark 4 Usability Updates:
- A new “Quick Start” provisioning mode that enables users to completely deploy, run, and get results from the benchmark using a single command line request.
- New Provisioning Modes that allow greater flexibility in how the VMs are distributed across a wider variety of storage.
- New Partial Tile functionality to increase the benchmark granularity through prescriptive enablement of application workloads within a final partial tile.
- Automation First design: Many of the underlying vSphere administrative operations are now available for users; Operations like deleting_all_vmmark4, manual_xvmotion, and power_vmmark4_tiles further assist users in enabling end to end automation of VMmark 4. See the vmmark4service for a list of the >20 new operations available.
- Enhanced HTML reporting: Users now automatically get enhanced HTML output for throughput, quality of service, and infrastructure operations on a per-run basis.
- A new “disclosure creator” application that simplifies and automates the creation of disclosure HTML files.
- Sustainable power collection is the new VMmark 4 approach to understanding power consumption. This mode collects power metrics on the systems under test and generates enhanced HTML output to help users understand both host and VM level power consumption.
- Alert Integration: Both Slack and Google Chat alerts are embedded into VMmark 4 and are easily enabled through a single parameter.
VMmark 4 Application Workloads:
- NoSQLBench: NoSQLBench is a new application workload within VMmark 4 that is used to analyze the performance of a new 3-node Apache Cassandra distributed NoSQL database.
- SocialNetwork: This new application workload within VMmark utilizes Docker container-based micro-services to simulate a social graph with operations like creating posts, following users, and more.
- DVDstore: Updated to version 3.5, which includes PostgreSQL and parallel database loading, reducing the time to provision the first tile.
- Weathervane: Updated to version 2.0, this highly scalable web application that mimics an online auction now runs in Kubernetes containers in addition to virtual machines.
- Standby: The Standby server mimics an idle heartbeat server that is periodically pinged to ensure it’s still running and connected.
VMmark 4 Infrastructure Workloads:
- vMotion: This infrastructure operation performs live migration of one of the Standby VMs in a round-robin fashion to simulate modern sysadmin operations.
- Storage vMotion: For this operation, one of the AuctionWebF VMs is migrated to a user-specified maintenance partition and then, after a period of rest, returns to the original location.
- Cross vMotion (XvMotion): This operation simultaneously moves one of the DS3WebA VMs to an alternate host and a maintenance storage partition. Similar to the Storage vMotion operation, 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.