VMware Says vSphere 4 Sets New Marks in Virtualization Performance

VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, has introduced VMware vSphere 4, extending scalability limits for servers and virtual machines.

With support for new hardware virtualization assist features and a highly-optimized I/O system, VMware vSphere 4 is an operating system for building the internal cloud.

The company said its new architectural enhancements enable even the most business-critical, transaction-heavy applications, such as SAP, Microsoft Exchange together with their SQL and Oracle databases, to be run on a 100 percent virtualized internal cloud powered by VMware vSphere 4.

"VMware vSphere 4 is setting new records in virtualization performance as the result of continuous improvements to the software and years of diligent work with hardware vendors," said Dr. Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer of VMware. "This translates into higher consolidation ratios and application performance that meets, and in some cases exceeds, that of physical deployments. VMware vSphere 4 helps take performance objections off the table for even the highest-end applications, allowing the virtualization benefits of higher availability, security, and automation to shine in the cloud."

VMware said it has demonstrated new record performance results and new performance maximums with VMware vSphere 4 including:

-Record number of transactions per second. New performance throughput record of 8,900 database transactions per second, as demonstrated on Oracle database with an OLTP workload modeled after TPC-C.

-Record low overhead compared to native. New performance efficiencies with resource-intensive SQL Server databases utilizing 8 CPUs per VM and running at 90 percent of native or better as tested by an OLTP workload modeled after TPC-E.

-Record I/O throughput. 3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second. VMware vSphere 4 triples the maximum recorded I/O operations per second to more than 300,000. For comparison purposes, according to data from VMware Capacity Planner, most demanding databases that are on Intel architecture servers usually require a few tens of thousands of I/O operations per second. VMware vSphere 4 also includes a newly rewritten storage stack that demonstrates full wire speed on 10 Gbps iSCSI connections.

-Record network throughput. Improved virtual machine networking and support for NetQueue that shows up to 100 percent improvement in network throughput and fully saturating hardware bus limits of 30 Gpbs.

-Estimated 30 percent improved performance for Citrix XenApp

((Comments on this story may be sent to newsdesk@closeupmedia.com))

Related terms: architecture, business, hardware, networking, operating system, security