Virtualization Performance: Linux VMs on ESXi

We introduced our new vApus FOS (For Open Source) server workloads in our review of the Facebook "Open Compute" servers. In a nutshell, it a mix of four VMs with open source workloads: two PhpBB websites (Apache2, MySQL), one OLAP MySQL "Community server 5.1.37" database, and one VM with VMware's open source groupware Zimbra 7.1.0. Zimbra is quite a complex application as it contains the following components:

  • Jetty, the web application server
  • Postfix, an open source mail transfer agent
  • OpenLDAP software, user authentication
  • MySQL is the database
  • Lucene full-featured text and search engine
  • ClamAV, an anti-virus scanner
  • SpamAssassin, a mail filter
  • James/Sieve filtering (mail)

All VMs are based on a minimal CentOS 6 setup with VMware Tools installed. All our current virtualization testing is on top of the hypervisor which we know best: ESXi (5.0). We have changed two things in our vApusMark FOS setup: we upgradeded the guestOS from 5.6 to 6.0 and increased the number of vCPUs of the OLAP VM from 2 to 4. This small upgrade means that our latest results should not be compared to the results in our older articles.

We (Tijl Deneut and myself) tested with four tiles (one tile = four VMs). Each tile needs nine vCPUs, so the test requires 36 vCPUs.

vApusMark FOS

The benchmark above measures throughput. As for response times, let's take a look at the table below, which gives you the average response time per VM:

vApus FOS Average Response Times (ms), lower is better!
CPU PhpBB1 PHPBB2 MySQL OLAP Zimbra
AMD Opteron 6276 2.3 671 514 1410 758
AMD Opteron 6174 2.2 674 524 1210 861
Intel Xeon E5-2660 2.2 645 394 160 631
Intel Xeon E5-2690 2.9 362 288 40 483
Intel Xeon X5650 2.66 745 569 821 866

Considering that we may assume that the Xeon E5-2690 consumes considerably more than the E5-2660, it looks like the Xeon E5-2660 is the new virtualization champ. Let us check out the power consumption numbers under a realistic load.

Benchmarking Configuration ESXi Performance per Watt
Comments Locked

81 Comments

View All Comments

  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    Put some sarcasm tags in there to save some people from getting confused...
  • cynic783 - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    definitely sarcastic. i was actually surprised not to see any fanbois so I thought I'd pretend
  • badjohny - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    I have no doubt these chips or something similar will end up in the new mac pros. Who are in a very bad need of a refresh.
  • Shuxclams - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    Looking at a complete visualization transformation in our server room, looks like the decision was made for us as far as architecture. Wow....
  • TeXWiller - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    <quote>The new Xeon also supports faster DDR-3 1600. Contrary to the Interlagos Opteron which can only support this memory speed with one DIMM per channel</quote>Interlagos supports memory up to DDR3-1600 using two single rank memory modules, or one single rank and one double rank module if using registered memory, and two single rank modules if using unbuffered memory. DDR3-1866 is supported on a single load-reduced registered, or on a single unbuffered module per channel. It depends on the board manufacturer and more importantly, it can be all read on the manual, so to speak.
  • davegraham - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    AMD Interlagos can support more than 1 DDR3-1600 ECC/REG dimm per channel. I run 8 on a single socket 6276 and it works at the rated speed.
  • TeXWiller - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link

    Too bad these kinds of errors in the articles are not usually fixed.
  • JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link

    I will double check .
  • meloz - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link

    Just wanted to congratulate Johan on a job well done. Very thorough analysis, Intel have achieved a very dominant position with this new platform and this is reflected in pricing of their processors as well!

    AMD was already a sub 10% niche (with a market share to mirror) in the data center, now even that niche has evaporated.

    New Opterons (based on Piledriver) might decrease the performance gap to Intel under certain benchmarks, but I doubt they will beat Intel. Intel has plenty of SKUs above the quickest AMD Opterons to adjust prices and kill any new challenge from AMD, instantly.
  • JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link

    Thanks! Although I hope Intel gets a bit more competition though.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now