Real-world virtualization benchmarking: the best server CPUs compared
by Johan De Gelas on May 21, 2009 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Benchmarked Hardware Configurations
Below you can find the configuration of the servers we used. The reason that we used 24GB is that we immediately started testing with two tiles (eight VMs) after the first tests. VMs together with the Nieuws.be OLAP databases are stored on two 1TB WDC WD1000FYPS SATA hard drives; the OLTP databases are on an Intel X25-E SSD while the logs are on a separate X25-E SSD. As our measurement show, DQL is very low thanks to this storage setup.
All tests are conducted on ESX 3.5 Update 4 (Build 153875).
Xeon Server 1: ASUS RS700-E6/RS4 barebone
(Additional information on this server)
Dual Intel Xeon "Gainestown" X5570 2.93GHz
ASUS Z8PS-D12-1U
6x4GB (24GB) ECC Registered DDR3-1333
NIC: Intel 82574L PCI-E Gbit LAN
Xeon Server 2: Intel "Stoakley platform" server
Dual Intel Xeon E5450 "Harpertown" at 3GHz
Supermicro X7DWE+/X7DWN+
24GB (12x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Xeon Server 3: Intel "Bensley platform" server
Dual Intel Xeon X5365 "Clovertown" 3GHz
Dual Intel Xeon L5320 at 1.86GHz
Dual Intel Xeon 5080 "Dempsey" at 3.73GHz
Supermicro X7DBE+
24GB (12x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Opteron Server: Supermicro SC828TQ-R1200LPB 2U Chassis
Dual AMD Opteron 8389 at 2.9GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 2222 at 3.0GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 8356 at 2.3GHz
Supermicro H8QMi-2+
24GB (12x2GB) DDR2-800
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
vApus/DVD Store/Oracle Calling Circle Client Configuration
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Foxconn P35AX-S
4GB (2x2GB) Kingston DDR2-667
NIC: Intel PRO/1000
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JohanAnandtech - Friday, May 22, 2009 - link
Most of the time, the number of sessions on TS are limited by the amount of memory. Can you give some insight in what you are running inside a session? If it is light on CPU or I/O resources, sizing will be based on the amount of memory per session only.dragunover - Thursday, May 21, 2009 - link
would be interesting if this was done on desktop CPU's with price / performance ratiosjmke - Thursday, May 21, 2009 - link
nope, that would not be interesting at all. You don't want desktop motherboards, RAM or CPUs in your server room;nor do you run ESX at home. So there's no point to test performance of desktop CPUs.
simtex - Thursday, May 21, 2009 - link
Why so harsh, virtualization will eventually become a part of desktops users everyday life.Imagine, tabbing between different virtualization, like you do in your browser. You might have a secure virtualization for your webapplications, a fast virtualization for your games. Another for streaming music and maybe capturing television. All on one computer, which you seldom have to reboot because everything runs virtualized.
Azsen - Monday, May 25, 2009 - link
Why would you run all those applications on your desktop in VMs? Surely they would just be separate application processes running under the one OS.flipmode - Thursday, May 21, 2009 - link
Speaking from the perspective of how the article can be the most valuable, it is definitely better off to stick to true server hardware for the time being.For desktop users, it is a curiosity that "may eventually" impart some useful data. The tests are immediately valuable for servers and for current server hardware. They are merely of academic curiosity for desktop users on hardware that will be outdated by the time virtualization truly becomes a mainstream scenario on the desktop.
And I do not think he was being harsh, I think he was just being as brief as possible.