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  • Candide08 - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link


    Cisco UCS blade servers have (supposedly) been optimized closely with Intel, VMWare and EMC. The goal is to reduce the IO "performance hit" and the network performance hit - by virtualizing an entire router and virtualizing the IO controller to an EMC SAN.

    Can you please comment on a performance comparison between a"standard" VMWare ESX implementation vs Cisco UCS ?
  • DukeN - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    What is VMWare's official stance regarding MS SQL and Exchange deployments in a virtualized environment - are we able to find detailed documentation on these two platforms being run on VMWare?

    Also, it seems Windows Terminal Services could greatly benefit from VMWare but in the past we hit some performance snags (the only application that did not work out in the hypervisor world).

    Has this improved in recent years, and does VMWare officially endorse such usage?

    Thanks!
  • Stuka87 - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    We run fairly large databases (MS SQL) in VMWare (Enterprise Plus), and over all the performance is decent. But its a big hit over running on straight hardware. We did some test with a Dell R910 with Xeon 7550's, and it showed how much slower the database is in VMWare. The actual percentage varied per test, and we ran up against some limits of VMWare itself when the database got to a certain size. But for our application, it still works out better for us to use VM's than dedicated servers.

    Can't comment on using terminal services from inside a VM though.
  • solgae1784 - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    Have you made sure your storage is configured correctly, and that you are doing an apple-to-apple comparisons? (e.g. number of CPUs, memory, storage, OS architecture, etc.) With databases, storage configuration can make quite a difference. One common mistake made when virtualizing is when you store all your database/log disks into a single RAID'ed disk array (VMFS datastore in VMware terms) and end up saturating the I/O capability of that RAID disk array - notably IOps capability. Make sure to follow best practices outlined by Microsoft, such as storing database and log into separate disk arrays (in this case, separate datastores) and using the correct type of RAID - usually RAID 5 for database and RAID10 for log. And make sure your disk array is capable of handling all the IOps required by your database.

    More memory assigned to VM also helps, since it can reduce the I/O to the disk. Just make sure you configure your SQL correctly to take advantage of it.
  • solgae1784 - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    @DukeN - Some of the bigger databases may or may not have trouble within the virtual, but you need to make sure to follow the best practices guidelines for SQL. With correct configuration, you should be able to achieve closely to native. Just keep in mind that a VM almost always won't be able to outperform a physical machine that is configured the same way (it could, but that is very rare). The question is if the trade-off is worth it - VMs have many advantages over physical like high-availability offered by VMware HA, maintenance flexibility offered by features like VMware VMotion, and hardware independence.
  • DukeN - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Well the really interesting thing is for Exchange 2007, the ESX performance seemed to exceed native for a couple of measurements (for Exchange 2007 anyways).

    I was wondering if there was any new research/guidelines for 2010 given the massive increase in popularity for virtualization between the two releases.

    SQL seems to be a very varying product however, and TS seems to be every more unpredictable.
  • solgae1784 - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    With TS, one of the studies published by Virtual Reality Check team indicates that a lot of "small" VMs (i.e. scale out) can essentially perform just as well or even outperform a single big physical server (i.e. scale up) when hosting terminal services. For example, a group of 4 VM servers with 2 vCPU VMs can essentially serve just as much or more users then a single physical server that has 8 CPUs. In general, scaling in approach is NOT encouraged in the virtual environment due to additional overhead generated with multiple CPUs compared to physical counterpart.

    The scale out approach also applies to SQL and Web servers as well, especially web servers because they don't scale up very well: http://vpivot.com/2010/03/22/optimal-web-servers-v...

    If you're worried about licensing, at least Microsoft has changed their licensing terms to be more virtual friendly, so for SQL enterprise for instance, you only pay for the physical sockets of your host server with the ability to host unlimited number of SQL instance VMs. Same thing for Windows Server Datacenter edition as well - you only pay for physical sockets in the host server and you can host unlimited number of any edition (e.g. Standard, Enterprise) of windows server VMs. So licensing savings can be another big incentive to virtualize your systems.
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Very good point, solgae1784,

    The storage configuration is just as important as the CPU/RAM configs. If your goal is to virtualize large sql databases you are going to need a lot of spindles and either use 10G E or 4GB Fiber (8GB would be better). You also need to make sure you have installed the necessary multipathing drivers or utilities kits to ensure the host and SAN controllers can communicate. Often poor performance is blamed on the physical resources when that just isn't the problem. It is something far more simple like a multipathing conflict, spindle bound, improper VMFS partition alignment, or just a lot of fragmentation.

    with all the technology we have today, many people believe everything is ready out of box technology. Unfortunately, enterprise solutions are rarely the case.

    I really wish VMware would make the CPU wait and I/O Wait performance indicators more easily available. These metrics are valuable for determining choke points!
  • Zibi - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link

    Hello everyone

    Sorry for digging this up but I've just stumbled on this and being fresh on the subject I'd like to add my 0.02 $.

    I've been comparing VM to phys in apple2apple for couple of weeks now.
    I'm using 2 IBM x3650 M2 with pair of Xeons E5540 each.
    Our test DB is small (4GB) but queries running on it are very CPU intensive (more OLAP than OLTP).
    First thing - MS SQL Enterprise does not seem to be using 8 vCPU. Results for 4vCPU and 8vCPU VMs are the same.
    Second thing - in our case 4vCPU VM compared to PH throttled to 4 cores is more than 15% slower. From my digging through Perfmon data it looks like the main suspect is amount of ContextSwitches / sec.
    For example VM hit max at 73000 CS/s to 95000 CS/s by physical machine.
    I've performed some tests on our earlier machines and the differences were even bigger.

    Considering that CS/s are even more important in the TS environment I'd not virtualize our Citrix farm without upgrading to the newest machines possible and adding another 10% power just to be sure.
  • duploxxx - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link

    what is your storage design/configuration in Vmware and did you use the same storage specs phys vs virt?
  • Zibi - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link

    Storage is kinda crude - mirror on 2 internal HDDs.
    After the tests we will connect FC cards to our SAN.
    However the disk config should not affect the test much:
    1. It's mirror config to the native
    2. The DB is smaller than available RAM
    3. I've made some tests on our older machines with RDM drives over FC.
    There were tremendous differences in SQLIO results (like 40000 IOs/s to 1300 in random read of 8KB) but amount of max CS/s was like 25000 and the whole test was much slower.
  • docbones - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    The price difference between Workstation and Fusion is huge. I really would like to see Vmware re-offer a home use license for Workstation.
  • dgz - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Can you please elaborate on your choice to Workstation in a home environment? It is by no means "light" compared to VB (which offers pretty much the same features) and if you really need some extra stuff there's always ESXi to play with.
  • docbones - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    I do alot of beta testing at work and at home. Home testing is more personal products based versus work - and I like the feature set of Workstation (which I use at work). Vmware used to offer a home license, so that was very nice.

    I am looking at trying out vmware server running on Windows Home Server and see if that will work instead. The one area of concern with that is how well it handles games and 3d engine.

    As far as using the MS version, haven't really tried it - as that I do testing with none MS OS's also I have not been really interested in that. (Plus would miss the vmware library)
  • GeorgeH - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    Is GPU virtualization reasonably suitable for gaming going to be possible anytime soon?

    As an add-on question, does OnLive (the cloud gaming service) somehow virtualize GPU resources, or do they have a discrete physical GPU for every client? If it's a trade secret, some educated speculation would still be interesting.
  • dgz - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    GPU virtualization is quite possible with Quadro and FireGL cards, combined with IOMMU capable CPU + Motherboard, which is exactly what OnLive is doing. Tech is not ready for home deployment at this time, though. I know, as I've been looking at this for quite some time now. Short answer - not going to happen (free of hassle and without money/time sinking) any time soon.
  • justaviking - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    My QUESTION is this: Is there any value or benefit of virtualization for the average consumer? Even if they don't know what it is, will it soon find its way into laptops or desktops sold to the general population in places like Best Buy? If so, why?
  • redisnidma - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    I'd love to see a second part with some AMD experts in the topic also to see their point of view on this topic. Since the Santa Rosa Opterons, AMD have been taking virtualization performance very seriously.

    Please guys, if you're going to cover a topic about virtualization, try to have different POVs from different vendors.
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Intel vs AMD really isn't a valid argument in the virtualization arena. Both companies do the same thing. at any point in time either company will be the top dog. Intel developers appear to work more closely with VMware on some of the new offerings than what AMD has been. That could also be related to profits though. Intel has had great profits, AMD not so much..

    Both companies will be at VMworld. You could get AMD's take on the topic of AMD vs Intel in a virtualized environment, if you like... AMD will say they win because they have a 12 core CPU. Intel will say they win because they have a 8 Core CPU capable of 2 threads per core...

    for most companies, it comes down to cost vs power vs performance..
  • marraco - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    Since today is easy to plug many monitors, mouse, and keyboards to common desktop PCs, why virtualization products do not allow many users to operate different virtual computers on single common PCs?

    The market is not important enough?

    Entire families would be enabled to buy a single powerful computer instead of many weaker ones. Public places who offer computer services would be allowed to save money on hardware. Why that is still not appealing to virtualization companies?

    There are plans to add these features?

    It seems like virtualization products are already very near of that goal, they just need to allow assigning some hardware resources to some virtual computers. Is that true, or really is (much) more complex to provide that feature?
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    you could buy thin clients and run citrix!! lol
  • marraco - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Thin clients are more expensive than a monitor (the cost of USB keyboard and mouse is almost null). And today many processors on CPU are completely wasted.
  • shamans33 - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    What's the best places (books, internet sites, etc) to learn more about virtualization?

    I'd like to know more about what's being offered out there (especially for hobbyists) and some stories about useful applications of virtualization. How is virtualization useful at home or for small businesses?
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Getting started is bit more of a challenge than it was 3-5 years ago.. Google is definitely your friend.

    There are quite a few books out there on virtualization for beginners. My suggest is to start playing with virtualization software and expand your knowledge base and go from there. VMware offers free evals of some of their products, but some of their products have stiff hardware requirements.. But, you can go and download VMware server and install it on windows or linux and start working with it. when you encounter a problem, google it. learn from it...

    There are a lot of different vendors offering virtualization packages.
  • Peroxyde - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link

    Q1. What is the current (and near future) status of the use of Nested Paging and Virtual I/O to improve virtualization performance? Are these hardware extensions really useful or just hype?

    Q2. Technically, is there still any head room for improvement in virtualization technology? If yes, is it in the hardware or in the design of the Hypervisor? What would be roughly the scale of improvement? 10%, 100% or 1000% ?

    Q3. Is it possible to virtualize a Mobile OS?

    Thanks in advance.
  • dgz - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    To answer Q3 :)

    "VMware to Bring Virtualization to Mobile Phones, Enabling a Host of Benefits for Handset Vendors, Corporations and Mobile Phone Users"

    http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/mvp.ht...
  • Shadowmaster625 - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    Am I the only one who is noticing that Dailytech's comments no longer load? Well obviously they must load for someone, because it says there are comments. But they sure as hell don't load for me!
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    I really wished VMware would offer a clustered file system option.

    VMware implements HA for host server redundancy, but it does nothing for redundancy at the SAN level. please please please add support for a clustered file system!! and yes, i do have redundant controllers, but that only works in some situations...

    a syslog function in the vCenter server would be great too.

    more control over update manager would be nice also. I really do not need iTunes patches.. lol
  • dilidolo - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    VMFS is a cluster file system.
    SAN level redundancy is storage vendor's job.
    Update Manager 4.1 removes guest patches, but even with older version of WUM, YOU configure what you want to patch. If you don't want guest patches, don't select it.
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    VMFS is a cluster file system but it is not a CLUSTERED file system. Meaning you can't mirror san LUNs. This is not a storage vendor's sole responsibility (not very many storage vendor's offered a clustered filesystem option or a way to mirror a LUN that wouldn't require a manual reconfiguration to use the mirrored LUN), this why veritas offers a clustered file system. If VMware would support this file system one problem would be eliminated, but not all problems.

    I think you misunderstood my comment about update manager. I want a simple interface so that I can select what updates are applicable. Meaning, I still want the functionality, but not all the updates that are currently bundled. IE, i want MS and Adobe updates but I dont want iTunes.
  • duploxxx - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link

    then VMware will have to take all the trouble of the different vendors, combinations, hw changes, patches.

    check the Vmware history, they want to stay vendor nuetral as much as possible.

    There are vendors available like Datacore who offer virtualized storage.
  • mpsii - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    I am having a hard time trying to determine the best hardware for server and desktop virtualization. There do not seem to be any benchmarks showing the performance comparison of, for example, a Phenom II X6 vs Core i7 (quad) processor. Some questions that arise:

    1) Given that more is better, when considering budget constraints, are more CPU cores better than more systems (one hexa core vs 3 dual core systems)?

    2) Or, is one system with 32 GB of RAM going to perform better than 2 systems with 16GB of RAM?

    3) Is an Opteron any better than a Phenom II?

    4) Is a core i7 that much better than a core i5? Core i7 vs Xeon?

    5) For desktop virtualization, what is the best hardware? or best for price/performance?

    This is information I cannot find to determine what hardware is needed. The difference in price between a single quad-core Xeon and a quad-core i5 is significant. A $200 Phenom II X6 is loads cheaper than a $800 hexacore Opteron.
  • spddemon - Friday, July 23, 2010 - link

    mpsii,

    VMware releases benchmarks on server hardware in a virtual environment and there is no such thing as a quad core i5 server CPU.

    here are the vmmark benchmarks.
    http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html

    and here is the overview of what vmmark is.
    http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/overview.htm...

    anand has discussed vmmark quite a bit and has discussed vmware's support for different hardware platforms equally. But the fact remains. from a support basis it is extremely difficult to support all hardware platforms. thus the necessity for validation and certification...
  • mpsii - Monday, July 26, 2010 - link

    Thank you for your response. I have looked through those benchmarks with interest only to find the hardware that I am unable to purchase due to budgetary constraints.

    Though there is no core i5 "server" CPU, there are cases where commodity hardware is cheaper to run than having a dedicated server-class infrastructure. It would be nice to see how VMWare products stack up with commodity hardware such as quad-core i5/i7 or Phenom II X4/X6.

    Utilizing iSCSI storage combined with commodity hardware, a lot of older server systems can be decommissioned while their applications run merrily along for a fraction of the cost (lease or purchase) of dedicated server systems. Personally, any quad-core processor on a motherboard that supports 16GB of RAM qualifies, in my mind, as a potential/entry-level server system. For web nodes, workgroup-class databases, and testing environments, there is a lot to be said for using a desktop quad i5/i7 or Phenom II X4/X6 over even entry-level 1U rack systems.
  • HMTK - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link

    You use the hardware that is supported by either the software vendor (VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, ...) or you rely on the supplier of the hardware to provide support for the virtualization software. If neither supports the combination you wish to use, you don't use it (for production, testing is something else). You're right that a quad core machine with 16 GB RAM is good for a simple server but you'd run into hardware limitations mighty fast. RAM is the first. Most single cheap socket machines have 6 RAM slots max, more likely 4. If you could use 8 GB modules in such a machine, be prepared to sell a limb or an organ. It would be cheaper to get a dual socket machine with slower CPU's and 2 or 4 GB RAM modules. OR start with a single CPU in such a system and upgrade the CPU along with RAM as you need. So you can see, there would be only a small market for single socket servers and hence no good reason to support them.

    And don't talk to me about no brand products...

    Yes, I've got vSphere 4 running on an Athlon x2 4200 with 8GB RAM and it works fine.
  • duploxxx - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link

    vmmark is ridiculous and outdated and you can't compare ESX with workstation and server edition. One thing you can conclude though based on for example Vapps from anandtech, you clearly see that Intel can only win with high ghz cpu against high core count low ghz amd. If you know bring this back to home brew design, there is a bit difference, here you have high ghz 6core in phenom x6 for the same price as way lower ghz 4 core intel for the same price. So choice is easy there is no such bargain as the X6 phenom for that price and the virtualization power you get, yes Intel will give you more power but you'll have to pay quite a lot more to buy those uber intel 6cores.

    btw don't forget to buy a decent disk system, that is the first thing that will kill your virtual environment.
  • the901 - Saturday, July 24, 2010 - link

    Really? No mention of Citrix at all. XenApp completely smokes vApp in so many ways from a support point of view. View4 really isn't as granular as XenDesktop when it comes to environments that need the detail. From my own testing, HDX is better than PCoIP for my remote users over vpn. Yes, VMware makes it easier to setup and I do like that. In the end, I like the ability to fine tune and Citrix allows that.
  • duploxxx - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link

    you can also run xenapp on Vmware you know?
  • Kingstu - Saturday, July 24, 2010 - link

    Is work being done for virtualized OS support on the Intel smartphone platform? I know that a while ago there was talk of VMWare doing that and with mobile processors getting faster and more powerful is that scenario more likely?
  • vision33r - Saturday, July 24, 2010 - link

    Anyone who has seen VMware and Citrix virtualization solutions kows that VMware only excels with standalone servers and they have no end to end solution with Terminal services or distributed VDI techology.

    Vmware falls behind just about any other VDI upstarts today in delivering a virtual desktop.

    Who cares about virtual servers, it's done. HyperV is free if you have Microsoft software assurance and integrates with Windows natively.

    Citrix Xendesktop provides a better distributed vDeskop than anything Vmware has to offer.

    Can VMware rDesktop do Multimedia and graphics intensive apps?? Nope, Citrix has HDX can support graphics intensive apps in their vDesktop.

    Citrix Provisioning services also completely beats Vmware's linked clone disk concept.
  • Smilin - Monday, July 26, 2010 - link

    Virtual Machine struggle to process realtime media in applications such as Office Communications Server.

    Can you detail why?
  • willrun4fun - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link

    I can't find the original article this refers back to.

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