VMC Benchmark Update 6 months on

Well, it's been 6 months since we reached the top of the leader-board at Geekbench and we're stil there. Check out the comparative performance data for yourself.

Benchmark results

Some recently published the results from Geekbench give comparative performance and ratings of VMC Server Virtualization Appliances’ vs the main stream.

Most of the ‘Hot-systems” tested on Geekbench are Intel Xeon based so in example 2 we also included an AMD vs AMD to give some idea of how much more punch our systems deliver due to the HPC approach we take to system design, component selection and tuning.

1) TOP Of the Charts VMC vs IBM & Oracle/Sun

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/top

2) VMC 1200Series IR system using 2 AMD Opteron 6176 2.3Ghz processors winning against DELL PowerEdge R815 using 4 AMD Opteron 6174 2.2Ghz Processors

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/compare/317797/294440

So it’s not just an Opteron vs Xeon thing though in our experience Opterons perform better in virtualization that the current Xeon range

3) VMC 1200 Series 2CPU system delivering nearly 80% of the performance of a 4 CPU HP DL580 G7.

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/compare/317905/303241

The HP server appearing on the Geekbench results is (according to HP figures) idle at 541 watts, and at 100% utilisation at 975 watts, assuming the CPU/RAM configuration that was tested, and that it had the same 4 port NIC that the VMCo had.

The VMCo system tested (the one scoring 80% of the HP score) was idle at 119 watts and at 100% at 307 watts.

The VMCo system that beat the HP (the 2nd link in this document) is 185 watts idle, 409 watts at 100% load.

So in this particular test, we are slightly faster than the HP box at less than half the power consumption while under heavy load.

Introducing Hyper-dense virtualization

Hyper-dense virtualization is about running even more workloads on even fewer machines, slashing the cost of datacentre power & cooling even further saving on software licensing, support contracts and physical infrastructure.

Whether building a Cloud, running a web farm, hosting 100's of sql-databases or serving up 1000's of virtual desktops; hyper-dense virtualization enables you to run more of everything more VMs, more connections, more clients.

The latest range of Hyper-Dense virtualization appliances from VMC deliver a tight, highly tuned integration of the worlds fastest commercially available server appliance and a choice of enterprise class hypervisors from VMware and Citrix.

At VMC we bring the disciplines of high-performance computing to the world of datacentre virtualization; enabling you to realize the full potential of Hyper-dense virtualization right out-of-the-box.

Going Hyperdense - VMCs Latest Virtualization Appliances

Here is some information on the new VA1200Series and VA2400 Series virtualization appliances from the Virtual Machine Company

The first of the new 2400Series started shipping this March. The 1200 Series in January.

Both are based on the latest 12 Core AMD Opteron CPUs and designed to deliver market beating performance 'and' hyper-density.

A VMC virtualization appliance is a high-performance x86-64 based server especially configured and tuned for virtualization; with your choice of hypervisor pre-installed configured and running our Virtual Estate Manager performance management software. Virtual Estate Manager is a small VM that provides both physical and virtual environment monitoring, alerting and reporting software which can help you gain the maximum advantage from virtualization.

Per unit VMC are appliances are keenly priced to compete with commodity server manufacturers, but much cheaper to run, and due to our Hyper-dense technology fewer units are required overall. The savings will of course depend on size of the estate, VM density and electricity tariff.

Price paid includes: Virtualization Appliance Hardware, Virtual Estate Manager Software, In-Cloud Monitoring and reporting service and 12 months next business day onsite hardware support, but excludes the cost of the Hypervisor license as this varies based on individual client requirements.

Model & description: 2400 Series
VA2400 2U, 4CPU, 48 Cores, 128Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
VA2450 2U, 4CPU, 48 Cores, 256Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
VA2500 2U, 4CPU, 48 Cores, 512Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM

Model & description: 1200 Series
VA1200 1U, 2CPU, 24Cores, 64Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
VA1220 1U, 2CPU, 24Cores, 96Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
VA1250 1U, 2CPU, 24Cores, 128Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
VA1280 1U, 2CPU, 24Cores, 192Gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM

As well as 12 months NBD support we also include 12 months complimentary subscription to the 'In-Cloud'; our virtual server babysitting service which provides 24 x 7 monitoring, reporting and alerting. Additional support options are available inc 4 hour same day, 24/7 and one, three or five year support periods.

The pricing is keenly set against vanilla hardware from the the commodity manufacturers; which belies the fact that the turn-key Appliance approach delivers ready-to-rack systems that are tuned to spec'. They are considerably faster, have better VM performance, offer greater VM density, require as little as half power & cooling - and come with some really great management software.

We also offer the IR (Infinitely Radical) upgrade which moves performance up another notch proving that you can have seriously hot performance and extreme VM density.

Some recently published the results from Geekbench give comparative performance and ratings against the main competition.

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/top

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/compare/303256/318534

You can also find spec sheets and product info here.

Citrix XenServer 5.6 ESG Lab Validation Report

The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) has released a report titled: Lab Validation Report, Citrix XenServer, Complete, Cost-effective Data Center and Server Virtualization.

The 20 page report which contains hands-­‐on testing of Citrix XenServer 5.6 with a focus on manageability, consolidation, and cost effectiveness.

The following features were tested: Initial deployment, managebility, XenConvert, OVG Appliance Import, Dynamic Memory Control, Workload Balancing, XenServer HA and StorageLink with Site Recovery.

Bit of light reading :0)

DCIG 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide Now Available

DCIG is a great resource for information on products and services in IT and I particularly like their technology reviews. I've been waiting for this report on Virtual Server Backup Software for a while and it was released today and is free to download from here.

The 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide weights, scores and ranks over 20 virtual server backup software products. It's worth a read.

Virtual Machine Company Webinar Recording and download

One of our partner companies 360IS recorded a Virtual Machine Company seminar is which is now available for download. For details of the agenda and material covered please see the original invite here.

Plug into your local Cloud

At the turn of the 20th century most big businesses owned their own power sources. It was very expensive, increasing the business costs dramatically and the ability/inability to generate power became limiting to the growth of business generally. Which was bad for the economy; as we all know that increased business costs effect the cost of the product to the consumer. If the cost of the product is too high then it won't sell and the business will fail. The solution was clearly a shared power resource - a main power plant that could rent power a piece at a time to the business, hence the creation of the electric companies. A positive spin off was the wide adoption of power to the home and the eventual arrival of home working.

Cloud computing offers the same type of service to businesses and people at home. There is no longer a need for a business or organisation to front the cost of building or maintaining their own data centres, because now you can rent a moment in time to perform the processing you need, and pay for what you use - that's why power companies are helping Cloud providers design their billing systems.

European IT Managers cool about Cloud

In February this year Computer Associates released an interesting report titled ‘Unleashing the Power of Virtualisation 2010_Cloud Computing and the Perceptions of European Business’ rather long title but actually a very interesting survey I would recommend downloading a copy from here. The survey covered the attitudes to virtualisation and cloud computing at 550 IT managers in 14 European countries with 65% of those surveyed having over 3000 employees and the remainder between 1000 and 3000.

After several readings of the results conclusions I would draw is that the growing confidence that is coming from the rapid and successful rollout of virtualisation projects is pulling the Cloud concept up the adoption curve very quickly. Evidenced by the fact that was only 17% of European IT managers identified “Cloud Computing” has been transformational to their business 47% of them are adopting cloud type delivery models for internal ICT services.

It is quite clear that the delivery of internal Cloud environments facilitated by increasingly robust virtualisation technologies is seen by European IT managers as a way of regaining control of the corporate computer environment thereby forcing down runaway IT costs that are widely acknowledged as a drag on the bottom line.

The Great Server-Centricity Con Job

Hardware today allows for higher and higher consolidation ratios “even if it is not our hardware”. More and more dense ram configurations are available but according to IDC the average number of VMs run on a single piece of physical hardware remains stubbornly at 'seven'.

Economics means we're incentivised to increase this ratio but fear stops us from doing so.

The concentration of risk that comes from the consolidation of more and more applications/ workloads/ services, call them what you will, onto fewer and fewer machines runs completely contrary to everything we have learnt to do in the last 20 years.

But, to our predecessors in the 80's and 90's this was considered normal everything ran on the Mainframe, a Couple of SuperMini's or on half a dozen VAXs.

What's happened is that we have been fooled into believing that the answer to needing to run a new application or service is to buy a new cheap server, and lets face it it's never been cheaper to buy servers - it's the spiraling cost of running them that is killing us!!

Do you think that the major Cloud providers are using 10's of thousands of those hot little 2CPU 16GB systems that DELL & HP are shoving down everyones throats?

No, they are built on RAM heavy, massively scalable 'custom designed hardware' with 'custom designed' capacity management software. With, of course, 'custom designed support'.

Just what we're offering to you, everyday... only with the Virtual Machine Company it's our standard design..!

A straightforward DR configuration

In a virtualised environment DR is always top of the agenda.

One of the pre-sales team put together this simplified network infrastructure overview of a DR config' that he recently installed at one of our customers.
The diagram shows the logical networks in both office and the DR site. IP addressing provided for illustrative purposes and simplicity of understanding only. In practice certain aspects of IP addressing will have to be changed to fit in with the clients pre-existing international office to office VPN.

Failover modes with this config'

In the event of Internet connection failure in the office, the default route for traffic will be via the DR site. Should two shared storage drives fail in one storage device, there is no interruption to service (Raid6). Should one physical Xen server node fail in the office, the other office node can continue running workloads. Should both virtualisation platforms fail or their storage then DR VMs can be accessed at the DR site.

If the entire office fails (both links down because of complete power outage, building on fire or whatever) DR is accessed over the Internet via VPN. Normally, the public Internet Router (or its firewall) provide the default route.

Should the Internet connection fail, the default route is the LAN extension service router. This fail-over routing can be achieved manually or automatically via technologies like HSRP/VRRP.

Hope you find this useful and I'm sure we'll post other snippets and suggestions in future.

Hot as Hell Data-Centers Impact Business Values

With energy consumption from ICT systems now accounting for over 40% of average office energy bills it is essential for business to consolidate their computing requirements through virtualisation of resources onto fewer more powerful systems.

The UK’s new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme came on line on the 1st of April - but according to consultancy Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) this is no joke.

As energy costs for business already set to soar over the next 5 years PwC suggest that the CRC could act as a costs multiplier - with poorly managed energy systems adding up to 20% to those increased energy costs.

As part of the governments scheme, participants will have to purchase allowances to emit CO2 and report their emissions. On the back of this reporting scheme, results will be published in a league table with bonuses paid to the best performing companies, and fines for the profligate.

PwC estimates that 5,000 businesses with energy bills in excess of £500,000 p.a will be affected with a typical company with a £1m p.a. energy bill seeing an additional £500,000 added to the already increasing energy bills over the next 5 years.

Bottom line for investors is that with CRC adding 2-6% to the annual operating costs, a large power hungry data-centers directly impact the companies value.

VMware slashes price of vSphere Essentials

VMware has announced that they have halved the price of vSphere Essentials, the entry level version of their core virtualisation product. Which is effectively a license for upto three Dual CPU machines.
Pitched as being ideal for small IT environments with fewer than 20 physical servers, the Essentials editions of vSphere includes the ESX and ESXi hypervisors which provide the virtualization layer that allows multiple virtual machines to share the computing, networking and storage resources of a single physical server.

If you're looking for more advanced features like High Availability or Data Recovery you'll need to dig a bit deeper, with VMware US prices list remaining stubbornly high.

With more focus from Microsoft & Citrix and a greatly improved products; the fact that Hyper-V is free and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V is quite cheap- the get what you pay for argument can only hold up for so long. See Register article.

In an effort to remove barriers to it's use Microsoft recently confounded pundits by embracing a range of Linux guest OS's including the previously verbotten Red Hat widening it's appeal to enterprises, and particularly service providers who need to run mixed environments

So in-spite of all the marketing hyperbola what's going on in the field? Well,
Virtual Machine Company makes a High Performance Virtualization hardware appliance and we ship with either VMWare, XenServer or Hyper-V pre-installed, and our experience of late is that whilst 9 out of 10 installs are VMware - 75% of customer meetings I have attended this year also ask us about Hyper-V.

Online Webinar

One of our partner companies 360is is hosting an on-line webinar titled

"How Virtualization Demands Are Changing Hardware Choices, The Emergence Of A Virtualization Appliance"

Why not stop by it's 15 minutes long and nicely to the point - if you can't make it on the day the recording and slides are up on line as well.

Cloud Computing: It's like computers on the Internet innit!

It's the future of technology! A disruptive shift of computing stack to online services! Well what ever we think it is it'll all be clearer after this word from Simon Wardley from Canonical...



Loved it...

What is a Cloud?

There's been a load of debate over Cloud and what it is... Thanks to Pete Peterson of Wells Fargo Bank for providing this useful extract and link to the NIST source

This NIST definition is the most concise and "share"able definition I've read. My favorite so far. Clip included:

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models."
- NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

Whilst virtualization technology is an obvious aid to 'Cloud' computing. It's probably worth saying that virtualization is not The Cloud - to the users I speak to it's clearly a way of describing computing as a utility or outsourced service delivery; which includes pretty much all the traditional managed services, some new ones and layered under SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.

Customer furore as Dell Disable non-Dell HDDs and SSDs

A short note on Dells recent moves to ensure that only Dell HDDs and SSDs are used in their Servers.

For a number of years Dell's systems have posted a warning that a HDD is non-approved, not that it's rubbish, or some unrecognised dodgy clone - just that it's not from Dell. Now in the latest 'generation' of the PowerEdge Server Range they have gone a step further and the PERC actually blocks the use of 3rd party drives.

This Register article has sparked a lively debate the general consensus of which is that
1) they should have told people before they did.
2) It's ok for a vendor to say what they're prepared to support but not stop people from using their product of choice.
3) They'll be looking at other server options

DELL has issued a white paper "Why Customers should insist on DELL Hard Drives" - clearly the real answer is "...we need your money and in order to get it we'll stop you having any choice!!" great customer service message.

It reminds me of the battle between IBM and Hitachi Data Systems & IBMs customers in the 80's. Which was over the use of 3rd party HDS disk packs in IBM Mainframes. IBMs insistance that only their peripherals (remember external disk packs weighed about a ton) would be allowed to work with their mainframes almost brought the company to it's knees as the US Gov' sued over anti-trust activities. But more importantly it pushed customers to consider alternative hardware vendors such as DEC, Compaq, and Sun. oh nearly forgot DELL...

NB: Dells RAID controllers are made by LSI and rebadged/BIOS'd their servers are designed and made by Hon Hai Precision Industries as are HPs and the Nintendo WII

Introducing the Virtual Machine Company

Nick, Andy and myself have been running The Virtual Machine Company for just over 18 months we have been successfully designing, building and selling Hardware Appliances that are specifically designed for running high performance virtualised workloads. Our aim being to improve all the datacenter metrics that make virtualisation a such a compelling technology; including maximising the density of VM workloads per unit of rack-space. Anyway, with virtualisation in mind let's hear from the virtual me...



Nick was also keen to tell you something about the ideas and common beliefs that drive our R&D roadmap.



Let's have a look at The Virtual Machine Company.

Or, drop us an email at info@virtualmachineco.com

Virtually Christmas

It's virtual'ly the holidays again. So in the spirit of virtualisation we are sending this Christmas greeting to you and all of our friends, colleagues and readers of VMYak. Happy Holidays to one and all !! Nick, Steve, Andy and the team at The Virtual Machine Company

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Welcome to VM Yak

This is the first post from the team at The Virtual Machine Company.

This is a three handed effort on our part. So expect to see a mixture of market analysis, technical discussions and informed comment.

As we've been around in many roles, for many years; we have gotten to know some interesting people - policy makers, manufacturers, service providers and people in the know, people that you might want to hear from directly. So expect guest bloggers to turn-up from time to time, banging their own drums about cloud computing, security and green-it.

So it's news, views, case studies and useful insights into the the issues of the day.

Why not bookmark us now, let us know if it's worth it :0)

Regards Steve, Nick & Andy