ISS Technology Update

Volume 8, Number 2

Understanding and interpreting the VMmark benchmark..........................................................................1

Expected life of the HP Smart Array BBWC upgrade module battery pack ................................................4

Meet the Expert—Mitch Wright ..................................................................................................................5

Quick tip: Customizing the iLO Text Console ..............................................................................................6

Recently published industry standard server technology papers ...............................................................9

Contact us ..................................................................................................................................................9

Understanding and interpreting the VMmark benchmark

Introduction

Using virtual machine technology to run multiple virtual servers on a single physical server continues to grow in importance as

the IT industry searches for ways to more efficiently use hardware compute resources in the data center.

Traditional benchmarks are typically designed to test the performance and scalability of a server performing a single large-scale

task such as database serving or web serving while running under a single operating system. Results of these types of

benchmarks, however, do not provide a reliable indication of the server‘s ability to scale when running multiple virtualized

systems in a virtual machine environment.

VMmark, which was developed by VMware and introduced in 2007, was the first and is still the dominant benchmark

designed specifically to measure and compare virtualized system performance for servers.

Structure of the VMmark benchmark

As a VMware product, the VMmark benchmark works solely with the VMware ESX hypervisor; therefore, it cannot be used to

measure the relative performance of other VMM solutions such as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Citrix XenServer. VMmark

can be used to gauge the relative virtualization performance of different server platforms when running the ESX hypervisor.

The Tile – VMmark’s basic unit of work

VMmark uses a set of six virtual machines, each running a particular operating system and application workload, to define its

basic unit of work – the tile. Table 1 shows a detailed breakdown of the operating systems and common data center

applications that comprise each of the six virtual machines in a tile.

ISS Technology Update

Volume 8, Number 2

Keeping you informed of the latest ISS technology

Compaq BL10e ISS Technology Update, Volume 8, Number 2

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