VMware Relaxes Benchmark Policy

Infoworld Virtualization Report just had a news article on VMware relaxing their benchmarking policy, though it seems that publishing benchmark results still requires prior approval by VMware. The article states: “provided that VMware has reviewed and approved of the methodology, assumptions and other parameters of the study”.

Virtualization is a very hot topic in the IT industry, yet there is very little quantitative data about security, isolation, performance, scalability, density, manageability and other characteristics of the virtualization products. Conducting benchmarking tests is neither simple nor cheap, and we feel that existing and potential customers should be able to access results of such tests; and  we stand by the performance edge that Virtuozzo offers.

In my opinion, a comprehensive virtualization benchmark is long due. The best solution would be for all virtualization players to commission an independent body to create a set of fair tests and then use it to benchmark their products. SPEC and TPC have been criticized, but they still remain some of the most useful and unbiased benchmarking suits. SPEC-VM could be a nice addition to the SPEC family.

Meanwhile, if you want to test Virtuozzo performance, just let me know. If you happen to have a VMware-approved methodology, please don’t hesitate to contact me to arrange for a competitive benchmarking of Virtuozzo.

TechEd 2006 recap

Last week we participated in TechEd 2006. We had a double booth in the Expo area – probably you saw us if you attended.
We talked (and listened) to A LOT of people, and here is the summary of our observations:

·         A lot more people are using virtualization compared to TechEd 2005. 80% are using virtualization and 100% are evaluating it for deployments – compared to 50% and 60-70% respectively at TechEd 2005.

·         VMware users were much more interested to alternative approaches. Last year VMware users may or may not have had the time to talk to us… this year they did J

·         Hardware virtualization is still used mostly for testing and development. Only about 25% or less of the people I talked to use it in production

·         About 80% of the production hardware virtualization users mention “OS sprawl” either as a problem they’re dealing with now or something they’re anticipating in the near future.

Rufus (our PR guy) came up with a fantastic idea with the Bose Headset giveaway. “Cancel out the Virtualization Noise” was the motto for the drawings, which turned out to be incredibly popular and generated a lot of interest around our booth.

Overall, it was a great event for us – we’re looking forward to the next year!

Virtuozzo is the only solution to the “virtual server sprawl”

Recently, there has been a lot of noise about “OS sprawl” and “virtual server sprawl”. Just look at the links below.

What is “virtual server sprawl”? This is an issue related to virtual machines, but not Virtuozzo operating system-level virtualization. Let me explain.

When you consolidate servers using virtual machines, you end up with fewer physical servers. However, the number of virtual servers and OS environments increases. One reason is that virtualization makes provisioning a new OS instance so easy that administrators deploy more specifically configured OS environments. Instead of running 3 server roles in a single OS instance, they might now put each in a separate VM. In addition, there is a “host” OS instance. Even if it’s a proprietary Linux-based microkernel, it still needs to be managed.

Each OS instance needs to be configured, updated, patched and monitored independently, As a result, because of increased number of OS instances with virtual machines, you end up with higher management costs instead of lowering them.

With Virtuozzo, on the other hand, there is only one OS instance. Which means that today Virtuozzo OS-level virtualization, with template-based software management, is the only technology on the market that solves the “virtual server sprawl” or “OS sprawl” problem.

 

Links:
http://www.itjungle.com/tug/tug052506-story04.html
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/1226/1/2/
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/1330/1/2/
http://www.cassatt.com/sltn_vtrl_infrstc.htm
http://www.infotech.com/ITA/Research%20Centers/Network%20Management/Application%20Servers/Server%20Sprawl%20a%20Key%20Issue%20in%20Server%20Virtualization.aspx
http://www.iee.org/oncomms/sector/informationpro/magazine.cfm?issueID=107&articleID=B1BFF68E-BB99-0955-0A260CB31882B8E7