Free benchmarking software from VMware – VMark 2.0
The free benchmarking software is destined for hardware vendors to be able to test the hardware for performance. It's a multi-host virtualization benchmark software which since of the version 1.0 did evolve quite a lot.
The second release of VMark can compare different virtualization platforms, which consist of multiple hosts, diverse multi-tier workloads and infrastructure operations.
To be able to start some testing, you basically need 2 host cluster with separate physical box for vCenter server. You'll also need a SAN and (if possible) 10 Gigs vMotion network..
Icluded in the download package there is a PDF VMark Benchmarking Guide which will tell you exactly what to install, what's the requirements and how to test.
Features:
– Application-centric Benchmarking of Real-world Workloads
– Unique Tile-based Implementation
– Multi-Server Virtualized Datacenter Benchmarking
– High-precision Scoring Methodology
Requirements:
– A 2-host cluster with the following:
o 4 logical CPUs per server
o 27 GB of memory
o 320 GB of shared storage
o vMotion compatible servers
– vCenter Server installed on a separate, dedicated server
– One native client system per tile, each with:
o 4 physical cores
o 4 GB of RAM
o 15 GB of available local disk space
– vMotion networking (recommend 10 Gb network)
A quick quote from the source:
VMmark 2.0 is the first standard methodology for comparing virtualized platforms. VMmark 2.0 generates a realistic measure of virtualization platform performance by incorporating a variety of platform-level workloads such as dynamic VM relocation (vMotion) and dynamic datastore relocation (storage vMotion), in addition to traditional application-level workloads. The benchmark system in VMmark 2.0 is comprised of a series of “sub-tests” that are derived from commonly used load-generation tools and commonly initiated virtualization administration tasks.
The VMmark 2.0 benchmark features a tile-based scheme for measuring application performance and provides a consistent methodology that captures both the overall scalability and individual application performance. The total number of tiles that a multi-host platform can accommodate and the performance of each individual workload within the tile determine the overall benchmark score.
You can download the software here.
Source: Vroom!
