I wanted to highlight some recent work done using a 3rd party benchmark and audited certification process that helps to address concerns that virtual overhead is still unacceptable for enterprise applications.
Many of our customers are no longer focused on this negligible consumption by virtualization as VMware software defined infrastructures have continued to demonstrate they can meet all their application needs, but yet some people still ask for this information.
SAP provides a test and certification methodology known as the Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark which provides several units of measurement, including Users and SAPS, that determines a hardware-independent score. This benchmark is run on both virtual and physical platforms and is well scrutinized before a certification number is issued.
There are two results I’d like to draw attention to:
Certification Number 2014043 (11/7/2014) by Dell/VMware – 9400 Users, 51400 SAPS
Certification number 2014017 (5/5/2014) by Dell – 10,253 Users, 55970 SAPS
These two benchmarks were performed on the exact same hardware and application stacks with the only exception being that VMware ESXi 5.5 was used on the most recent test. From this we can easily demonstrate that this comprehensive application and database benchmark shows only a 8.3% difference in virtual versus physical performance.
Additionally it’s worth noting, for Monster VM fans, that the virtual machine was configured with 48x vCPU’s and 256GB of RAM.
The message here is that virtual performance of an enterprise’s most demanding applications is near that of physical and that the value provided from the virtual platform more than exceeds the minute cost. Be confident – virtualize everything!
Special thanks to our partner Dell and our performance gurus (Erik, Sebastian & Louis) at VMware for these efforts.
