* IBM, Intel form virtualization initiative
Intel and IBM last week formed a virtualization initiative aimed at improving how IT managers choose, deploy and measure virtualization software in their data centers.
The initiative, which will encourage IT to use products such as VMware Infrastructure on Intel Xeon-based servers, has launched a tool that lets users benchmark their virtualized environments. Called vConsolidate, the software runs multiple workload instances consisting of database, mail, Web and Java applications on multiple virtual partitions on IBM System x servers. This test lets IT simulate real-world performance.
The two companies are contributing vConsolidate to the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. for consideration as a standard benchmark. An example of vConsolidate is available here.
In tests conducted on an IBM System x3950 with four dual-core Intel Xeon 7100 processors, performance throughput topped out at 46% more than a competing system running a combination of larger two- and four-virtualized processor partitions.
IBM and Intel also created a sizing guide for VMware Infrastructure that helps customers configure the virtualized server options available to them. The tool provides recommendations on target utilization rates and the number of virtual machines needed to support the workload. The sizing tool gives a customer the ability to support more applications when usage peak, conserve memory across virtual machines and allow the use of more processor targets for scheduling job execution.
IBM and Intel have used both the sizing guide and vConsolidate testing to determine that memory is a limiting factor in determining how many virtual machines can exist on a physical server.
To help customers adopt virtualization, IBM is expected to open a Virtualization Resource Center in the first part of next year.
