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

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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