VMware Continues to Break Records in Storage Performance Exceeding the Requirements of the Most Demanding Enterprise Applications
VMware vSphere™ 4 Clocks 364,000 IOPS in Record Storage Throughput Enabling Customers to Move Toward 100 Percent Virtualization in the Internal Cloud
ORLANDO, FL, May 18, 2009 — Today at EMC World 2009, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, announced record storage performance for VMware vSphere™ 4, the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud. VMware vSphere™ 4 has achieved 364,000 input output operations per second (IOPS) in maximum storage throughput far exceeding the needs of even the most demanding enterprise applications. VMware vSphere™ 4 outperforms any virtualization solution on the market, nearly quadrupling its previous record. These performance results demonstrate why customers are deploying VMware virtualization across their datacenters, moving toward 100 percent virtualization.
According to data collected with VMware Capacity Planner, most demanding databases usually require a few thousand IOPS in storage performance. For example, an Oracle database averages 1,280 IOPS for a 4-way Oracle virtual machine. VMware vSphere 4 exceeds this requirement from a single server—and can power up to:
- 700,000 Microsoft Exchange mailboxes
- 273 4-way Oracle databases
- 10x more storage throughput than all of Wikipedia
“With such high records of storage throughput, VMware continues its track record for industry-leading performance,” said Dr. Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer of VMware. “VMware vSphere performance enhancements enable virtualization of the most I/O-intensive applications in the world, helping customers justify moving to 100 percent virtualization across their companies.”
VMware vSphere 4 has an enterprise-class storage architecture for virtualization; it incorporates a number of new high performance features to help achieve this record I/O throughput. It includes a new paravirtualized virtual machine storage device called pvscsi, a new core-offload I/O system to utilize processors on multi-core systems, processor scheduler enhancements to improve the efficiency of interrupt delivery and associated processing, and advanced I/O concurrency updates, all of which significantly optimize storage throughput for high-transaction-rate workloads. VMware vSphere 4 also introduces new scalability capabilities. By expanding server resource support to 1 TB of RAM and 64 logical processing cores, some of the very largest and most powerful servers can be leveraged for virtual workloads. With support for up to 256 GB of RAM and eight virtual CPUs per virtual machine, nearly 100 percent of resource-intensive workloads such as high-end databases are suitable for virtualization.
VMware recorded the new VMware vSphere 4 storage performance benchmark at the EMC Partner Engineering Lab in Santa Clara, California. The test setup included a single VMware vSphere 4 server generating I/O load on 30 enterprise flash drives (EFDs) spread across three EMC CLARiiON CX4 networked storage systems in RAID 1/0 configuration. The Iometer tool was used to generate 8K I/O size, 100 percent Random 100 percent Read I/O workload against the test disks in each of the three virtual machines used in these tests.
The greater scalability limits and better consolidation ratios with VMware vSphere 4 enable customers to run many more virtual machines on a single server, and yet support the storage throughput needs for all those virtual machines,” said EMC’s Chad Sakac, Vice President, VMware Technical Alliance. “The tests, performed using EMC CLARiiON CX4 networked stotrage systems with 30 enterprise flash drives delivered performance comparable with 2000 FC drives with 85% lower acquisition cost, and 95% less power, cooling and space. These results and cost savings will illustrate that VMware vSphere can more than meet the performance needs of any mission-critical, resource-intensive application, while providing additional benefits such as higher availability.”
VMware vSphere 4 is expected to be generally available during the second quarter of 2009.
For more information on these performance tests, visit http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/ and click on the article titled, “350,000 I/O operations per Second, One vSphere Host.” For more information on the performance enhancements of VMware vSphere 4, visit http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_performance_wp.pdf.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter—bringing cloud computing to businesses of all sizes. Customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion , more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
VMware and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements made in this press release which are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate, but are not limited, to, continuing customer adoption and deployment of VMware virtualization products and expectations for the release and delivery of our products. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) the duration and deepening of negative economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in consumer or information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (iv) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products, (v) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology initiatives; (vi) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (vii) changes to product development timelines; and (viii) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.