Let The TPC-VMS Benchmark Wars Begin

In the benchmark world, the Transaction Processing Performance Council (aka TPC) has long been the owners of the premier performance benchmark.  I'm referring to the TPC-C database performance benchmark where millions have been spent to prove performance excellence.

A new benchmark from TPC that is designed to focus on the performance of virtualized databases was created called TPC-VMS.  And very recently the first TPC-VMS result was published by HP using vSphere 5.5.

This means that the HP and VMware vSphere solution has the "Leadership" position for the TPC-VMS benchmark - as of right now.

What happens next will be interesting.

The first published result establishes the target for everybody else.  Will there be a bunch of publications over the coming months?  Each a little bit better.  Or will it take some time for anybody to be able to surpass this initial publication?

It is also of course possible that nobody else will ever publish a TPC-VMS result.  Sometimes new benchmarks just never get established.  If this is the case, then vSphere would hold the number one position forever.  But this isn't what we want.

Ideally the healthy competition of a benchmark fosters innovation, software and hardware improve, costs come down, and customers benefit.