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Virtualization Platforms Compared

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

More and more organizations are using virtualization techniques to shed flab

in their data center and also cut on power costs. And there is no dearth of

vendors selling virtualization solutions. The market has become so competitive

that you can literally pick and choose the solution that best fits your needs.

In our previous articles, we have talked about how virtualization can help you

save costs, space and power. Now, as the number of virtualization deployments

have increased, so has the complexity involved in managing them. It's imperative

that you know how different virtualization platforms perform and what you should

look for while choosing them.

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Here, we test the top three different virtualization platforms: VMware

Infrastructure 3.5, MS Hyper-V and Citrix Xen Server 5 to help you make an

informed decision.

Test setup



For testing we used the latest Intel Dunnington Server having 4 processors with
6 cores each and 16 GB RAM. For benchmarking we used CINEBENCH 10 64-bit, POV

Ray 64-bit and Linpack. We ran these benchmarks on Windows 2003 Enterprise

64-bit OS which was installed virtually on different platforms. We tried to form

a common ground for comparing these platforms based on the number of processor

cores in each platform.

Direct Hit!

Applies To: Data center

admins



Price: NA


USP: Understand the performance of
different virtualization platforms and choose the best one for your

need.



Primary Link: None


Keywords: Xen Server, VMware, MS Hyper-V


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We found out that MS Hyper-V and VMware Server allow only upto 4 cores per

processor whereas Xen Server allows allocation of 8 cores per virtual machine.

So, we took 4 cores as the standard across all platforms. But we also tested for

8 cores with the Xen Server, so that we get to know the difference in

performance.

For managing VMware server and Xen Server, we used a Core2 duo machine with 1

GB RAM where we installed clients for both, Xen Center for Xen Server and VMware

infrastructure management console for VMware Server. The management machine and

the Server were connected over Gbps network. We also tried running SunGard on

the virtual machine of different platforms, but it didn't run.

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Test results



CINEBENCH 10 64-bit: Initially we started the test with CINEBENCH 10 which
measures the performance of processor and graphic cards.

We first installed Windows Server Datacenter 2008 along with Hyper-V on the

Dunnington server. Then we created a new virtual machine with 4 cores, 15 GB RAM

and 20 GB HDD. On the virtual machine we installed Windows Server 2003

Enterprise 64-bit Edition.

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Once the OS installation finished we installed CINEBENCH 10 on the virtual OS

and then ran the benchmark. With one core on Hyper-V it gave 3052 CB-CPU and for

4 Cores it gave 10565 CB-CPU. Next we installed Xen Server on Dunnington server

and with its client tool, we created a new virtual machine. We allocated the

same resources as for the previous virtual machine, and installed Windows Server

2003 Enterprise 64-bit. Again we installed CINEBENCH 10 and ran the benchmark.

For one core it gave a score of 3028 CB-CPU which is slightly less than Hyper-V

but on 4 cores it gave 11057 which is higher than Hyper-V. We repeated the same

process with VMware Server, and with one core, CINEBENCH 10 gave 3079 CP-CPU

which is a bit higher than both Hyper-V and Xen Server. With 4 cores it gave

11103 CB-CPU with is higher than both Hyper-V and Xen Server. We also tested

CINEBENCH 10 on 8 cores with Xen Server and found that the score were really

amazing. It gave a score of 19458 CB-CPU which is far greater than what 4 cores

can provide.

POV Ray: Next we used the ray tracing program POV Ray which is again

used for CPU benchmarking. It uses the ray tracing rendering technique to

calculate how may image pixels are rendered per second by simulating how light

travels in real world. For running this benchmark we followed the same procedure

as that for running CINEBENCH 10.

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We installed the host OS and then created a guest with Windows Server 2003

Enterprise OS, and allocated the same resources as that while running CINEBENCH

10. In Hyper-V it rendered 118.18 PPS over 147456 pixel which took a total of

1247.75 seconds.

In the case of VMware Server it rendered 116.42 PPS over the same amount of

pixels which is less compared to Hyper-V. And also the total time taken by

VMware Server is 1266.55 seconds which is more than Hyper-V. On Xen Server, POV

Ray rendered 119.68 PPS over 147456 pixels which is more as compared to the two

other platforms and took 1233.36 seconds which is also lesser than both. But on

8 cores for Xen server, it rendered only 119.60 PPS over the same amount of

pixels.

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The reason behind this is that POV Ray used a maximum of 3 cores, and that

too not simultaneously.

Linpack: Next we ran Linkpack which is the toughest test for any

server. It measures a system's floating point computing power by making the

system solve an N by N linear equation (ie Ax = b). It calculates the maximum

number of GFlops that can be generated.

The setup for running this benchmark is similar to the previous benchmarks.

On Hyper-V it gave 28.6 GFlops and on VMware server it gave 29.93 GFLops which

is good as compared to Hyper-V. But for achieving these results we had to do

some tweaking to its input file. On the Xen server Linpack gave 33.84 GFlops

which is better than the other two.

Now with 8 cores the figure was really amazing. It gave 64.25 GFlops which is

comparable to any physical server score.

We reviewed the Harpertown server (January 2008 issue) with two 3 Ghz

quad-core processors, 16 GB RAM and two 200 GB SATA hard disks connected through

a PCI-X RAID controller. On Harpertown, Linpack gave 65 GFlops which is a bit

higher than this virtual machine created on Xen Server.

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