red hat enterprise virtualization performance: specvirt ... - Zift Solutions

RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION
PERFORMANCE: SPECVIRT BENCHMARK
AT A GLANCE
• The performance of Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization can be
compared to other
virtualization platforms using
the SPECvirt_sc2010
benchmark
• SPECvirt_sc2010 measures
hypervisor performance using
realistic workloads
• As of Jan. 1, 2012, RHEV leads
VMware in performance on
comparable servers defined by
CPU count
• The RHEV subscription model
provides high performance at a
lower cost-per-SPECvirt_sc2010
than VMware
• The addition of vRAM pricing to
VMware vSphere 5 increases
the overall cost of VMware
performance, the variability of
that cost, and may require
additional optimization to
minimize cost beyond what is
required to maximize
performance
OVERVIEW
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) is the strategic virtualization alternative for
organizations looking for better total cost of ownership, faster return on investment,
accelerated break-even, and freedom from vendor lock-in.
RHEV consists of both a hypervisor technology and an enterprise virtualization manager. The
RHEV hypervisor, based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel and the Kernel-based Virtual
Machine (KVM) hypervisor technology, offers the high performance and scalability that Red
Hat is known for.
Hypervisor performance is a key factor in deciding which virtualization platform to
implement, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization performance, as measured by the
SPECvirt_sc2010 ® benchmark, leads the industry both in terms of highest overall
performance and highest number of performant virtual machines on a single server.
WHAT IS SPECvirt_sc2010 ® ?
SPECvirt_sc2010 is the first vendor-neutral benchmark designed to measure the
performance of datacenter servers that are used for server virtualization. The benchmark
was developed by the non-profit Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC)
virtualization subcommittee, whose members and contributors include AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, HP,
IBM, Intel, Oracle, Red Hat, Unisys and VMware.
SPECvirt_sc2010 uses realistic workloads and SPEC’s proven performance measurement
methodologies to enable vendors, users and researchers to compare system performance
across multiple hardware, virtualization platforms, and applications.
The benchmark utilizes several SPEC workloads representing applications that are common
targets of virtualization and server consolidation. SPEC modified each of these standard
workloads to match a typical server consolidation scenario of CPU resource requirements,
memory, disk I/O, and network utilization for each workload. These workloads are modified
versions of SPECweb2005, SPECjAppServer2004, and SPECmail2008.
Scaling is achieved by running additional sets of virtual machines (VMs), called “tiles,” until
overall throughput reaches a peak. All VMs must continue to meet required quality of service
(QoS) criteria. An example of a SPECvirt_sc2010 tile is shown below in Figure 1:
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Figure 1
Scaling the workload on the tested system consists of running an increasing number of tiles.
Peak performance is the point at which the addition of another tile (or fraction) either fails
the QoS criteria or fails to improve the overall metric.
HOW DOES RHEV PERFORM ON SPECvirt_sc2010 ® ?
As of Jan. 1, 2012, 21 SPECvirt_sc2010 benchmark results have been published by
organizations testing both Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and VMware ESXi hypervisor
platforms. All SPECvirt_sc2010 scores below are measured as XXXX@YYY where XXXX is
the raw performance score and YYY is the number of VMs that yielded that score.
Performance per core and per CPU
Below in Table 1, the best SPECvirt_sc2010 score for each category of core count is
compared. RHEV leads VMware in the 12, 20, and 40 core categories and has the only
published 64 and 80 core scores.
# of cores Best VMware SPECvirt_sc2010
score
Best RHEV SPECvirt_sc2010 score
12 1221@78 1367@84
16 1570@102* 1369@84
20 1878@120 2144@132
32 2742@168 N/A
40 3824@234 4603@282
64 N/A 5466@336
80 N/A 8956@552
Table 1 * The best “16 core” score for VMware is on a dual-socket AMD Opteron 6282 SE with 8 cores and 16
integer units per CPU, compared with the 8 cores and 8 integer units per CPU with the dual-socket
Intel X7560 used for the best Red Hat score.
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As shown in Table 2, RHEV also leads VMware in the two- and four-socket server category
and has the only published scores for eight-socket servers, including the single server with
the highest overall performance (8956) and the highest number of performant virtual
machines (552 VMs).
# of CPU Best VMware SPECvirt_sc2010
score
Best RHEV SPECvirt_sc2010 score
2 1878@120 2144@132
4 3824@234 4603@282
8 N/A 8956@552
Table 2
CONSIDERING COST/PERFORMANCE
When deciding which virtualization solution to deploy, it is important to consider not only the
raw performance of the platform but also how much it will cost to achieve that performance.
Like all Red Hat products, RHEV is sold on a subscription basis. Unlike proprietary software,
there is no high upfront license fee. Instead, you pay per socket per year for the software you
use.
RHEV has always been less expensive than VMware on a one year and three year basis. (See
the separate Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers: Competitive Pricing Guide for
more details.) With the release of vSphere 5 in July 2011, VMware introduced the concept of
licensing virtual RAM (vRAM). With vSphere 5, you now need to license the greater of either
(a) the number of socket licenses or (b) the number of licenses needed for the vRAM on
running virtual machines.
For this paper, the three-year costs for the 21 submitted SPECvirt_sc2010 scores that were
published as of Jan. 1, 2012 were compared. Each SPECvirt_sc2010 submission contains
detailed information on the number of sockets on each tested system as well as the vRAM
configuration of each virtual machine. This information was used to price RHEV, vSphere 4
(which was licensed only per-socket), and vSphere 5 (which requires the greater of the persocket
or per-vRAM licenses).
The cost to license the 21 listed environments for three years was calculated, and then the
calculated license cost was divided by the performance value of the SPECvirt_sc2010 score
to calculate dollars per SPECvirt_sc2010 ($/SPECvirt_sc2010 performance).
For example, in the first score listed in the results page at
www.spec.org/osg/virt_sc2010/results/specvirt_sc2010_perf.html, the SPECvirt_sc2010
score 2721@168 was achieved on a 4 socket system (per the Physical Configuration section in
the Full Result Disclosure) running 476GB of vRAM (calculated by summing the Memory
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defined for each VM in the tile as shown in the Virtual Configuration section, and multiplying
by the number of tiles shown in the Performance Summary). RHEV pricing is based on socket
count only, so the cost to license RHEV with 24x7 support for this environment is:
$749/socket/year X 4 sockets X 3 years = $8998
The calculated value of $/SPECvirt_sc2010 performance over three years for RHEV for this
configuration is therefore:
$8998 / 2721 = $3.30/SPECvirt_sc2010
RHEV cost is lowest per SPECvirt_sc2010 performance
As you can see in Figure 2, the cost to license RHEV for three years for each of the systems
tested in the SPECvirt_sc2010 benchmark is the lowest whether you are looking at 2, 4, or 8
socket systems. The average cost is $2.72/SPECvirt_sc2010. In addition, the costs are
clustered in a narrow range of $1.95–$3.84/SPECvirt_sc2010.
Figure 2
vSphere 4 cost per performance is higher
VMware vSphere 4 is more expensive than RHEV over the three year period, averaging
$6.28/SPECvirt_sc2010. That is roughly 2.28 times the cost per SPECvirt_sc2010 of RHEV.
This is due to the upfront license fee and the Support and Subscription (SnS). Again, because
vSphere 4 pricing only considered sockets used, the cost range is fairly narrow at $4.45–
$8.76/SPECvirt_sc2010.
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vSphere 5 cost is highest, more variable, pushes Enterprise Plus
With the addition of vRAM licensing, vSphere 5 pricing is now the highest, averaging
$17.38/SPECvirt_sc2010, which is 6.38 times the average cost per SPECvirt_sc2010 of RHEV,
and an increase of 2.8 times the cost of licensing the previous version vSphere 4. This
represents a substantial increase in the cost of the hypervisor. The costs for vSphere 5 are
also highly variable, with a low of $10.19/SPECvirt_sc2010 to a high of
$35.29/SPECvirt_sc2010.
The reason for this increased cost is that you must license the greater of the per-socket cost
or the per-vRAM cost. High performance and utilization of virtualization involves many
virtual machines with a large amount of vRAM; and in each of these cases the vRAM cost is
what needs to be used to determine the cost of the vSphere licensing.
In all of these cases, the cost was calculated using the Enterprise Plus Edition of VSphere 5.
Why? Although Enterprise Edition is less expensive per socket, it only comes with 64 GB
vRAM per license. Enterprise Plus comes with 96 GB of vRAM per license. In these cost
calculations, it was actually less expensive to upgrade to Enterprise Plus solely to license the
vRAM.
The range of costs for vSphere 5 is also more variable than with the socket-based licensing
of vSphere 4 and RHEV, because for each of the test systems, virtual machines were tuned
for performance, not for vRAM utilization. When only socket count needs to be considered,
one can be conservative and give the virtual machines more RAM and allow the hypervisor to
manage the memory.
Because VMware users now have to pay for vRAM, an additional optimization to minimize the
vRAM in each VM may be necessary to lower costs. Time and effort spent on optimizing
vRAM may add a hidden cost to your virtualization environment in addition to the higher
overall cost of licensing vRAM, and may require trade-offs in either performance or cost.
SUMMARY
In conclusion, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization not only offers great performance on the
only independent virtualization benchmark, it does so at a great cost/performance ratio
especially when you take the vRAM licensing of vSphere 5 into account.
WHAT’S NEXT
For more information, please go to www.redhat.com/rhev or contact your Red Hat
authorized reseller or local Red Hat sales office.
www.redhat.com

DISCLAIMER
Red Hat product offerings, pricing, and terms and conditions are accurate as of January 2012
and are subject to change and local pricing. Pricing for non-Red Hat virtualization platforms
and guest operating systems are based on published retail or volume license pricing in the
United States as of December 2011 and is subject to change and local pricing.
SPEC®, SPECvirt, and SPECvirt_sc® are trademarks or registered trademarks of the
Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC). Competitive numbers shown reflect results
published on www.spec.org as of January 1, 2012. The comparison presented is based on core
count versus SPECvirt_sc2010 score (Table 1), CPU count versus SPECvirt_sc2010 score
(Table 2), and license cost divided by SPECvirt_sc2010 performance score for each published
system under test (SUT) based on (a) 1 Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Premium
subscription per SUT socket for three years, (b) vSphere Enterprise Edition license per SUT
socket plus three years of Enterprise Edition Platinum SnS per SUT socket, and (c) vSphere
Enterprise Plus edition and three years of Enterprise Plus Edition Platinum SnS to license the
amount of vRAM used in the virtual machines specified in the “Virtual Configuration” section
for each SUT per the published VMware rules for vRAM licensing. For the latest
SPECvirt_sc2010 results visit www.spec.org/osg/virt_sc2010.
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Jan 2012 / DOC63160