Qedem

As I mentioned in my last blog, we have been developing VMmark 2.0, a next-generation multi-host virtualization benchmark that models not only application performance in a virtualized environment but also the effects of common virtual infrastructure operations. This is a natural progression from single-host virtualization benchmarks like VMmark 1.x and SPECvirt_sc2010. Benchmarks measuring single-host performance, while valuable, do not adequately capture the complexity inherent in modern virtualized datacenters. With that in mind, we set out to construct a meaningfully stressful virtualization benchmark with the following properties:

• Multi-host to model realistic datacenter deployments
• Virtualization infrastructure workloads to more accurately capture overall platform performance
• Heavier workloads than VMmark 1.x to reflect heavier customer usage patterns enabled by the increased capabilities of the virtualization and hardware layers
• Multi-tier workloads driving both VM-to-VM and external network traffic
• Workload burstiness to insure robust performance under variable high loads

The addition of virtual infrastructure operations to measure their impact on overall system performance in a typical multi-host environment is a key departure from traditional single-server benchmarks. VMmark 2.0 includes the execution of the following foundational and commonly-used infrastructure operations:

• User-initiated vMotion 
• Storage vMotion
• VM cloning and deployment
• DRS-initiated vMotion to accommodate host-level load variations

The VMmark 2.0 tile features a significantly heavier load profile than VMmark 1.x and consists of the following workloads:

• DVD Store 2 - multi-tier OLTP workload consisting of a 4-vCPU database VM and three 2-vCPU webserver VMs driving a bursty load profile
• OLIO - multi-tier social networking workload consisting of a 4-vCPU web server and a 2-vCPU database server
• Exchange2007 - 4-vCPU mailserver workload
• Standby server – 1 vCPU lightly-loaded server

We kicked off an initial partner-only beta program in late June and are actively polishing the benchmark for general release. We will be sharing a number of interesting experiments using VMmark 2.0 in our blog leading up to the general release of the benchmark, so stay tuned.