One of the questions we were asked after our recent webcast with IDC (recorded version coming soon) was what our thoughts were on what virtualization benchmarks should be used and when these metrics would be released.

It's a great question and we strongly believe that virtualization performance depends on the application characteristics (for example, CPU, disk, and ethernet IO).

Currently, there are two benchmarks being developed by the industry - one by VMware and the other by Intel. You have to carefully look at what the benchmark measures to determine its applicability to your task. Both VMware and Intel are using a blend of many benchmarks to approximate a "standard" consolidation environment and are being submitted to Spec.org. We expect they will be in committee for some time.

There are a number of benchmarks that measure different attribute types. For example, SpecINT (also from Spec.org) measures CPU performance. If you are running CPU intensive workloads, then this may be the most applicable benchmark. There are disk IO benchmarks such as bonnie, or application benchmarks such as Exchange. See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/performance.mspx for more details.

The bottom line is that everyone should evaluate the types of workloads that they plan to virtualize and run your own benchmarks, as your environment (network configuration, hardware, operating systems, etc.) will influence the results greatly.

Post your questions in our forums and we'll answer them!