VMmark 2.0 Rocks Your Multi-Host World

That's right - VMmark 2.0 - a new version of an established benchmark - ROCKS!  It breaks new ground for virtualization benchmarks because it was designed and built as a multi-host benchmark.  The minimum config for VMmark 2.0 is two physical servers because a core component of the new benchmark are what is referred to as "Infrastructure Operations."  This is stuff like vMotion, Storage vMotion, and DRS.  These are some of the key reasons that vSphere is used and they only happen when there are more than one physical host involved.

These infrastructure operations are combined with an application workload to make VMmark 2.0. In addition the workload that is driven varies throughout the course of the test run.  This isn't just a steady state test, the workload levels change throughout the test.  This combination of factors is what makes VMmark 2.0 so compelling.  It includes more than just the application performance and should more closely reflect the work that is being done in real environments.

There are two key reasons why it is great that the benchmark more closely models real environments. The first is that as everybody competes to improve their VMmark 2.0 scores, the changes and enhancements that they make are more likely to be useful for real environments.  The second is that the results can be more directly applied in terms of sizing estimates.

This is good stuff that is a big improvement for benchmarking virtualized environments.

Todd