We’ve talked a lot about virtualization in this newsletter. There is no denying that those organizations not yet plotting their virtualization strategy likely will be left at a disadvantage. I wrote a newsletter a few weeks ago pointing out a good article by Denise Dubie that talked about a list of questions IT managers need to ask before pushing ahead full throttle into any virtualization project.

Now VMware is hoping to make answering some of those questions a little easier. Last week, VMware introduced VMmark, a benchmark system designed to measure the performance of applications running in virtualized environments. Having such benchmarks is extremely important since existing benchmarks can tell you how a single workload is performing, but not how multiple applications on a single piece of hardware may be faring.

If you don’t have accurate benchmarks on those commingled applications you could end up with too few – or too many – physical systems. VMware says VMmark will help tell you which hardware provides the best performance and scalability for particular virtualized environments. VMware also expects server vendors to use the benchmark system and then provide a VMmark score for their hardware, which would tell buyers how the different systems support various virtual workloads.

VMware says VMmark grew out of its broader effort to promote open standards and formats in virtualization technology. Last fall, VMware was part of the creation of a working group within the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation [SPEC] to look specifically at developing standard benchmarks for measuring virtualization performance. That group, which includes VMware, is still working on setting standards.

VMmark itself is the result of two years of work, including engineering design, partner input and customer surveys, according to VMware. The VMmark benchmarking system is available for download here.

Read the IDG News Service story about fairness questions regarding VMmark here and then let me know what you think of VMmark.

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