VMmark and benchmarking of Hyper V and XEN

[maksaraswat]

Hi,

I am doing my final graduate directed project and I need to know whether VMmark can be used to benchmark virtual machines created on/by Hyper V and XEN?

Thanks in advance.

Maksaraswat

[drummonds · Accepted solution]

Hyper-V cannot run VMmark due to its limited SMP support. Xen should support VMmark's run rules. Give it a try and let us know what you see!

Scott

More information on my communities blog and on Twitter:

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/drummonds

[maksaraswat]

Referring to image on this page http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/features.html

Does each server like Email Server, Java Server, Standby Server, etc. represent separate tiles which is 6 in this case or the combination of all servers represent one tile?

Thanks in advance!

Mayank

[jamesz08]

All 6 VMs represent 1 tile.

[maksaraswat]

Thanks for your quick reply.

Is there a way on ESX by which I can install Server 2003 and SUSE Enterprise once and then clone or copy them twice? I am asking this because VMmark has 6 virtual machine 3 each of windows and Linux hosting different servers. This will save a lot of my time.

Thanks,

MakSaraswat

[jamesz08]

Apendix F of the VMmark Benchmarking Guide contains information on cloning.

If you have Virtual Center you can clone through the UI.

Cloning through the CLI is not difficult, however it is a bit more involved since you will need to manualy modify each VM to give it a unique IP and hostname.

Either method will require the use of sysprep to clone the Windows systems. Sysprep is available on the Win2k3 CD in \support\tools\deploy.cab

The mailserver VMs must be cloned BEFORE making them a domain controller and installing Exchange.