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White Paper

IBM PowerVM Virtualization Technology on IBM POWER7 Systems A Comparison of PowerVM and VMware vSphere (4.1 & 5.0) Virtualization Performance

Printed in the United States of America Copyright 2011 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors resulting from its use. All products are trademarks of their respective owners. First Publication: September 2011; Second Publication: January, 2012 Produced by: Craig Norris, Sr Analyst; Barry Cohen, Editor-in-Chief; Manny Frishberg, Editor This document was developed with IBM funding. Although the document may utilize publicly available material from various vendors, including IBM, it does not necessarily reflect the positions of such vendors on the issues addressed in this document.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 3 Objective .................................................................................................................................. 3 Audience .................................................................................................................................. 3 Contents of this Report .......................................................................................................... 3 The Business Value of Virtualization ...................................................................................... 4 Benchmark Comparison Study: PowerVM vs. VMware ...................................................... 6 AIM7 Benchmark.................................................................................................................... 6 TPoX Benchmark .................................................................................................................. 10 Summary of Results ............................................................................................................. 20 IBMs Virtualization Infrastructure: POWER7 Systems .................................................... 21 PowerVM ............................................................................................................................... 22 Processor Virtualization ...................................................................................................... 22 Memory Virtualization ........................................................................................................ 23 I/O Virtualization.................................................................................................................. 23 Partition Mobility ................................................................................................................. 23 Partition Hibernation ........................................................................................................... 23 Workload Partitioning ......................................................................................................... 24 Systems Management .......................................................................................................... 24 PowerVM Advantages......................................................................................................... 25 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 28 Appendices .................................................................................................................................. 31 Appendix 1 Benchmark Configuration Information ........................................................ 31 Appendix 2 General Benchmark Descriptions .................................................................. 34 Addendum ................................................................................................................................... 35

Executive Summary
Todays business organizations need to rein in IT costs without sacrificing performance, security, reliability, and flexibility. A new era has emerged in which it is now possible, through intelligent and strategic use of new and/or advanced technology, to achieve breakthrough economics, considerably reducing the cost of delivering the workloads central to a businesss operation. IBM has aggressively been making pioneering strides in IT infrastructure, harnessing trends and innovation to deliver top-notch functionality with great efficiency for considerable data center savings. IBM's Smarter Computing initiative has helped many forward-thinking organizations design, tune, and manage their IT infrastructures to make them designed for data, tuned to the task, and managed in the cloud. A cornerstone of this initiative is a move toward architectures optimized for specific purposes and built around deep domain knowledge. The goals here are to reduce deployment times for systems from months to days, improve performance with utilization rates of up to 90 percent, and to reduce floor space, power consumption, labor, and total cost per workload. The key technology advancement harnessed to achieve these goals is server consolidation through virtualization. Using virtualization to consolidate data center servers has become an integral component of how successful companies design their IT systems. However, the majority of businesses fall far short of realizing the full potential of server consolidation. On average, consolidation ratios are only around six virtual machines (VMs) per physical server. Even world-class organizations are only consolidating at a ratio of about 18 to 1 at best. Much higher VM densities are possible without degrading system performance, significantly reducing data center consolidation expenses and yielding a considerable economic advantage to organizations. Under the banner of Power is performance redefined, IBM has introduced an impressive profile of servers with the 2010 launch and 2011 release of Power Systems servers and blades. These products are based on the IBM POWER7 processor architecture, ranging from 2-socket to 32-socket with up to 256 cores. To evaluate what IBMs virtualization technology can offer clients, Edison Group was engaged to help provide a clear understanding of the benefits that can be seen when organizations implement virtualization technology as part of their IT environment. IBM virtualization technologies support a server virtualization ratio of 1,000 to 1, outdoing competitors and providing for massive data center consolidation. Clients using

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POWER7 systems and PowerVM virtualization technology achieve higher operational savings by using greater VM density. Many of the advantages stem from the fact that PowerVM technology is built directly into the firmware of all Power Systems servers. The widely-deployed VMware vSphere and other x86-based virtualization products are typically third-party software add-ons, sold and installed separately. This technical white paper presents benchmark results showing greater VM consolidation ratios than demonstrated in previous benchmarks and demonstrating the extent of the performance lead that PowerVM virtualization technologies deliver over x86-based add-on virtualization products. The tests, running two workload benchmarks of different consolidation ratios on POWER7 processor-based and comparable Intelbased systems, demonstrate the exceptional performance and scalability of PowerVM virtualization technologies compared to VMware vSphere1 on an x86-based platform. Key findings include the following:

PowerVM technology on an IBM Power 750 system performs up to 131 percent better than VMware vSphere in whole core configuration with a consolidation ratio of 32 to 1. PowerVM on Power 750 outperforms VMware by up to 525 percent when running multiple VMs and workloads, despite the test Intel x86 system (Westmere-EX) containing a greater number of cores (40 versus 32). PowerVM technology on a 4-socket IBM Power 750 system demonstrated linear scaling, with 50 percent more absolute throughput performance compared to VMware vSphere. In terms of throughput performance, vSphere 5 demonstrated no improvement over vSphere 4.1 update 1; in fact, it demonstrated slightly lower performance overall.

The benchmark results clearly reveal that PowerVM virtualization technology on POWER7 processor-based platforms offers greater performance than that offered by VMware vSphere on Intel x86 platforms. They enable high consolidation ratios, broader scalability, and increased flexibility for a far superior virtualization solution. PowerVM virtualization technology on POWER7 processor-based platforms not only uses system resources in shared processor mode more efficiently, but also delivers superior performance when resources are over-committed with a higher consolidation ratio. Together they establish PowerVM virtualization technology as the consolidation system of choice for organizations wishing to realize the full advantages of greater VM density.

For results of comparison benchmarks with VMware vSphere 5, see the Addendum to this study.

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Introduction
Objective
The objective of this white paper is to compare the performance of PowerVM virtualization technologies on POWER7 processor-based server platforms against VMware vSphere on comparable Intel x86 platforms. It describes tests using industrystandard benchmarks to compare virtualization technologies. The results were reviewed, analyzed, and presented by Edison Group.

Audience
This paper is intended for anyone interested in the advantages of server consolidation through virtualization. IT managers, CIOs, system architects, and others will find valuable information that will help them further enhance and adopt virtualization technology within their IT environments.

Contents of this Report

This white paper contains the following major sections:

The Business Value of Virtualization This section discusses the business value propositions underlying the benchmark evaluations presented in this paper. Benchmark Comparison Study: PowerVM Virtualization Technology vs. VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 This section presents the comparative testing, describing the test bed setup, the benchmarks, the actual tests, and the results of the tests. IBMs Virtualization Infrastructure: POWER7 Processor-Based Systems This section describes the Power Systems virtualization infrastructure, its components, and its advantages. Appendices The appendices contain configuration information and general descriptions for the benchmarks used in the tests discussed in this paper Addendum Benchmark Comparison Study: PowerVM Virtualization Technology vs. VMware vSphere 5 This section presents the comparative results with VMware vSphere 5 on an HP ProLiant DL580 G7 E7-4870 server which features the X5600-series Xeon (Westmere-EX) chip architecture.

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The Business Value of Virtualization

Inefficiencies have cropped up in data center operations as applications, workloads, and data have multiplied. These include: underutilization of server processor capacity, memory bottlenecks that restrict performance, server sprawl and its related difficulties in deployment and management, as well as higher energy bills from excessive power demands. Such inefficiencies increase costs, both through expenditures for equipment purchases and licensing, as well as through greater demands on administrative staff resources, etc. Virtualization technologies allow IT organizations to consolidate workloads running on multiple operating systems and software stacks, and to dynamically allocate platform resources to meet specific business and application requirements. Server virtualization, the foundation platform for todays data center, is quickly reaching maturity. More than half of business server workloads are now deployed on virtual machines. According to IDC, 2 virtualization has become the default build for new server installations, driving down costs and establishing the foundation for more efficient and flexible configurations and technology platforms. The average size of virtualized workloads increased threefold between 2006 and 2009. The performance of virtualization is a critical factor to realize success of server pools and cloud computing (and is also a key component in IBMs roadmap in its Smarter Computing initiative). Well-implemented virtualization solutions may be employed to:

Reduce hardware expenditures by consolidating multiple environments, including underutilized servers, and systems with varied and dynamic resource requirements. Reduce costs for power and cooling, floor space, hardware maintenance, and software licensing. Grow and shrink resources dynamically according to business needs. Deploy new workloads through provisioning VMs or new systems rapidly to meet changing business demands. Develop and test applications in secure, independent domains while allocating production to its own domain on the same system. Transfer live workloads to support server migrations, balance system load, or avoid planned downtime that can otherwise adversely impact productivity. Control server sprawl, reducing system management costs.

The Value of Memory-Dense Servers: IBMs System x MAX5 for its eX5 Server Family, March 2010, IDC

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Despite this, the majority of businesses fall far short of seizing upon the full potential of server consolidation. Their average consolidation ratio hovers around six VMs per server,3 yet economic advantages from data center consolidation increase significantly at much higher VM densities. By increasing the consolidation ratio per system, businesses can reduce capital expenditures and operational costs by reducing the number of systems in their data center or IT organization. IBMs Smarter Computing systems, which allow for greater VM density without degrading system performance, can deliver considerable economic advantages to organizations using them. This study examines the performance and scaling aspects of PowerVM and VMware vSphere virtualization at high consolidation ratios (32:1 and 40:1) across two different commonly employed industry benchmarks (AIM7 and TpoX). The case of 40:1 consolidation ratio five virtual machines per core was mapped to achieve a higher amount of compression than the client deployment consolidation ratio surveyed in 2010.4

According to a recent Aberdeen Group report, Best-in-Class Practices for Virtualizing Microsoft Applications, August 2010, even the best-in-class organizations in the study consolidate at only an 18:1 ratio. 4 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/121510-vmware-server.html
3

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Benchmark Comparison Study: PowerVM vs. VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1

AIM7 Benchmark
AIM7 is a well-known open source benchmark. It is widely used by UNIX computer system vendors to compare system performance. It comprises three pre-defined tests suites (compute, multi-user, and database). Each suite is a mix of compute-, memoryand I/O-intensive atomic tests covering a wide range of operations. AIM7 also stresses the guest operating systems kernel performance within virtualized environments. The testing described in this paper used the compute server test suite.

Methodology
For AIM7 scaling tests, all 32 available cores were used to scale from one to 32 virtual machines on both platforms. The Power Linux version used on PowerVM virtualization technology was SuSE 11 SP1, while SuSE 11 SP1 x86_64 version was used as guest OS on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. (Configuration details of the tests are in the appendices.)

Results
AIM7 was scaled in one, two, four, eight, 16, and 32 virtual machines (each virtual machine having one virtual processor). Scaling was close to linear on both the POWER7 processor-/PowerVM technology-based systems and the Intel/VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 platforms. The tests were run at close to 100 percent utilization to measure the absolute performance of AIM7 in each VM configuration. POWER7 processor-/PowerVM technology-based systems demonstrated more than two times (110 percent) better performance than Intel/VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 at one, two, four, eight, and 16 VM configurations, while at 32 VM, PowerVM technology demonstrated a 115 percent advantage (Figure 1). NOTE: The VM configuration and the test results can be found in the tables following the graphs for each test in this paper, starting with Figure 1. Table 1 shows the details on throughput and CPU utilization for each configuration. In this test, the VMs on both platforms were configured as close to identically as possible. In the case of PowerVM, each logical partitioning (LPAR) was given one core entitlement, one vCPU (virtual CPU), and 3 GB RAM; in the case of VMware vSphere 4.1

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update 1, each VM was given one vCPU and 3 GB RAM, with the remainder left at default options.

Figure 1. AIM7 Benchmark Virtual Machine Scaling Performance

System Configuration for AIM7 Benchmark (1 to 32 VM Scaling)

IBM Power 750 3.5 GHz DPSM mode, 4 sockets, 512 GB RAM, SMT4 enabled, PowerVM and SLES11 SP1 (Power Linux)

# of VMs
1 2 4 8 16 32

Total Virtual CPUs

1 2 4 8 16 32

% CPU Utilization
94.6 94.3 97.8 94.6 98 96.9

Jobs / min
19048.5 38120.5 76189.5 152249.8 303983.8 603085.1

HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 2.26 GHz, 8 cores / 24 MB cache (4 sockets Intel Xeon 7560 Processors, 512 GB system RAM, (HT and Turbo enabled in BIOS Intel VTx with EPT HW virtualization assist) VMware vSphere 4.1, SLES11 SP1 (GA x86_64)

100

9068.6

2 4 8 16 32

2 4 8 16 32

99.89 94.15 100 92.5 95.2

18137.2 36180.1 72398.3 144365.4 280726.8

Table 1. AIM7 Benchmark Multiple Virtual Machine Scaling Results

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PowerVM and VMware vSphere technologies differ in the way they map a physical processor to a virtual processor. PowerVM virtualization technology maps all four threads of a core (SMT4, introduced with POWER7 processor-based systems) to a virtual processor. So, PowerVM technology leveraged POWER7 SMT4 technology with one vCPU configuration. VMware vSphere maps one of the two threads of a core (Intels HT technology) to a virtual processor. Therefore, VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 was not able to leverage Intels HT technology with one vCPU configuration per VM. The tests on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 were thus repeated with two vCPU per VM configuration in order to observe performance with two threads running on a core. Because the VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 VM was reconfigured to have two virtual processors, the test team wished to ensure that each VM was assigned a core to match with PowerVM technology. So, CPU affinity was used to assign two threads (the primary and secondary thread of a core) to two virtual processors of each VM.5 This set of tests was a fair comparison with PowerVM test results, since it allowed the workload to consume all the capacity of the system in a manner similar to POWER/PowerVM technology. The results of the second test are shown below (Figure 2). The second test results with two vCPU reveal that results for the Intel Xeon processor running VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 had improved, but still lagged behind POWER/PowerVM results. In each of the tests, PowerVM technology still demonstrated up to 59 percent higher throughput performance than Intel 7560 /VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1, at close to 100 percent utilization. Power 750/PowerVM technology demonstrated higher AIM7 throughput performance than the HP system with Intel 7560 processor using VMware technologies. Many factors contributed to this superior performance, including: PowerVM technology efficiency, IBM POWER7 SMT4 technology, and IBM POWER7 processor core frequency (specifically, the fact that IBM POWER7 technology supports higher frequency with the same processor capacity than does Intel Xeon technology).

That is, one vCPU of a VM was assigned to an even number logical processor, and a second vCPU of a VM was assigned to an odd number logical processor. For example, the first vCPU of the first VM was assigned to logical cpu0, and the second vCPU of the first VM was assigned to logical cpu1, so that all the primary and secondary threads of cores were consumed by the workload running on that VM.

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Figure 2. AIM7 Benchmark Multiple Virtual Machine Scaling with two vCPU for VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1

System Configuration for AIM7 Benchmark (1 to 32 VM Scaling)

IBM Power 750 3.5 GHz DPSM mode, 4 sockets, 512 GB RAM, SMT4 enabled, PowerVM and SLES11SP1 (Power Linux)

# of VMs
1 2 4 8 16 32

Total Virtual CPUs

1 2 4 8 16 32

% CPU Utilization
94.6 94.3 97.8 94.6 98 96.9

Jobs / min
19048.5 38120.5 76189.5 152249.8 303983.8 603085.1

HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 2.26 GHz, 8 cores / 24 MB cache (4 sockets) Intel Xeon 7560 Processors, 512 GB system RAM, (HT and Turbo enabled in BIOS Intel VTx with EPT HW virtualization assist),VMware vSphere 4.1, SLES11 SP1 (GA x86_64)

95.19

12274.8

2 4 8 16 32

4 8 16 32 64

99.67 95.75 95.32 99.8 92.09

24351.7 48671.4 97531.6 190598.1 379976.1

Table 2. AIM7 Benchmark Multiple Virtual Machine Scaling with two vCPU for VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1

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TPoX Benchmark
TPoX (Transaction Processing over XML) is an application-level XML database benchmark based on a financial application scenario. It simulates an actual application that performs queries, inserts, updates, and deletes in a concurrent multi-user workload. It is an XML OLTP benchmark using data-oriented XML structures, very large numbers of relatively small XML documents (1 kb to 20 kb), short read/write transactions, and a high degree of concurrency. It models a security-trading scenario that uses a real-world XML Schema (FIXML). TPoX is an open-source benchmark developed by IBM in collaboration with Intel and others. It is available at: http://tpox.sourceforge.net/tpoxresults.htm 6 A database application, TPoX stresses CPU, memory, and storage I/O; however, in a multi-VM environment, this benchmark also stresses the virtualization infrastructure supporting these resources on both platforms.

Methodology
The next set of tests was conducted using the TPoX benchmark. These tests involve a higher degree of processor contention, using a VM-to-core ratio of 5:1. Because of this increased ratio, the shared pool configuration was reduced in these tests to eight cores on both platforms, in order to limit the maximum VMs to 40 on each platform. The TPoX benchmark is I/O-intensive and its performance is dependent on storage performance. Identical storage subsystems were used on both of the VM platforms. A logical array (12 spindles) with RAID5 was used to host four VMs on each in order to avoid I/O blender 7. Both the data and logs for the database are configured on the same set of disks in order to simplify the configuration for hosting 40 VMs. Each VM used a 1 GB database in order to match up with each VMs CPU (0.2 core) and memory capacity (3 GB). A single-tier TPoX configuration was chosen for each VM where the client and the database reside in the same VM. The VM configuration has multiple options on both PowerVM and VMware vSphere technologies 8
6
7

Reference: http://nativexmldatabase.com/2011/03/04/new-tpox-benchmark-results-available/ http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/102510-burning-questions-virtualization-storage.html 8 On PowerVM, each VM was configured with 0.2 core/one vCPU/uncapped mode/3 GB RAM with shared processor pool allocated with one, two, four and eight cores (up to one socket) for five-VM, 10-VM, 20VM, and 40-VM, respectively. There were three dedicated LPARs configured to consume the other three sockets on Power 750 system. On VMware, two sets of configurations were used; the first set includes a configuration where each VM was given one vCPU/20 percent of a core 452 MHz limit/4 GB RAM, and

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Results
The database for each VM on each of the platforms was populated with the same configuration set. The transaction rate for populating the database is shown in Table 3. Power 750/PowerVM Order (inserts per second) Custacc (inserts per second) 1,591 684 HP DL580G7/ VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 1vCPU 746 271

Table 3. TPoX Database Populated Rate for First Configuration Set

As these results indicate, the performance rate for populating the database is two to twoand-a-half times better for POWER/PowerVM technology than with Intel Xeon 7560 /VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. Figure 3, below, presents results demonstrating that the transactions throughput performance on POWER/PowerVM technology is as much as three times better than Intel Xeon 7560 /VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. 9

Figure 3. TPoX Benchmark Results in 40:1 Consolidation Ratio

Table 4 presents detailed information on the total number of TPoX users used in each test, pool utilization, throughput, and VM configuration for each tests.
advanced shared panel settings that included 1) hyperthread core sharing and, 2) scheduling affinity set to 0-15 (logical processors). The idea was to run five VMs on a single core; with five vCPUs the entire core should be utilized in hyperthreading mode. 9 Because processor utilization in the first VMware configuration set made it harder to report total percentage, in this case pool utilization was used. With a single virtual processor per VM, it would not be realistic to map to either a primary or secondary thread per VM. For example, in the five-VM test, where the goal was to use 20 percent of a core, binding a VM could be done either to a primary or to a secondary thread, in which case some VMs would be running on primary and others would running on secondary. Thus, the decision was made to use the pool to assign cpu0 to cpu15 for all the tests. At a lower number of VMs, VMware used around 20 percent from each of the cores in the pool; at 40 VMs the pool utilization matched with PowerVM as it is shown in Figure 3.

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System Configuration for TPoX Benchmark (1 to 40 VM Scaling) IBM Power 750 3.5 GHz DPSM mode, 4 sockets, 512 GB RAM, SMT4 enabled, PowerVM, AIX 7.1 is the host OS for each VM. VIOS is configured with 0.2 core/1 vCPU/ uncapped mode/ 4 GB RAM. Each LPAR is configured with 1 vCPU/ uncapped/3 GB RAM 3 LPARs have 0.2 cores and 2 LPARs have 0.1 core Shared pool has one core 8 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, 2 LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has two cores 18 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, 2 LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has four cores 38 LPARs configured with 0.2core/ 1vCPU/uncapped and 2 LPARs configured with 0.1core/1vCPU/ uncapped. Shared pool has eight cores HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 2.26 GHz, eight cores / 24 MB cache (4 sockets) Intel Xeon 7560 Processors, 512 GB system RAM (HT and Turbo enabled in BIOS Intel VTx with EPT HW virtualization assist) VMware vSphere 4.1 update1. Each VM has guest OS RHEL6 GA. Each VM is given 0.2 of a core/1 vCPU/3 GB memory. DB2 buffer pool for data is configured in each VM. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 and cpu1. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu3 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu7 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu15 Table 4. TPoX Benchmark Results

# of VMs

Total Virtual CPUs

Total # of TPoX % Pool Transactions Users Utilization per second

50

12.5

612.2

10

10

100

24.5

1155

20

20

200

49

2137

40

40

400

98

4169.8

50

21.8

203.18

10 20 40

10 20 40

100 200 400

33.89 56.62 97.26

397.15 760.52 1571.27

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Figures 4A and 4B depict the response time for each transaction type query, update, delete, and insert for each test on both platforms.

Figure 4A. TPoX Query and Update Response Time

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Figure 4B. TPoX Delete and Insert Response Time

As shown in Figure 4A and 4B (above), the response time on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 was two to six times higher, compared to PowerVM virtualization technology, as the number of VMs scaled from five to 40 VMs. The pool utilization was higher as well, while throughput was lower on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 than on PowerVM technology. Even though hyper threading (HT) technology was leveraged in this test, VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 performance remained one-third of that demonstrated by PowerVM technology.

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# of VMs
IBM Power 750 3.5 GHz DPSM mode, four sockets, 512 GB RAM, SMT4 enabled, PowerVM, AIX 7.1 is the host OS for each VM. VIOS is configured with 0.2 core/1 vCPU/ uncapped mode/ 4 GB RAM. Each LPAR is configured with 1 vCPU/ uncapped/3 GB RAM 3 LPARs have 0.2 cores and 2 LPARs have 0.1 core. Shared pool has one core 8 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, two LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has two cores 18 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, two LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has four cores 38 LPARs configured with 0.2core/ one vCPU/uncapped and two LPARs configured with 0.1core/1 vCPU/ uncapped. Shared pool has eight cores HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 2.26 GHz, eight cores / 24 MB cache (four sockets) Intel Xeon 7560 Processors, 512 GB system RAM (HT and Turbo enabled in BIOS Intel VTx with EPT HW virtualization assist) VMware vSphere 4.1 update1. Each VM has guest OS RHEL6 GA. Each VM is given 0.2 of a core/1 vCPU/3 GB memory. DB2 buffer pool for data is configured in each VM. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 and cpu1. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu3 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu7 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu15

Avg Avg Avg Total query update delete Virtual rsp rsp rsp CPUs (sec) (sec) (sec)

Avg insert rsp (sec)

0.09

0.08

0.03

0.05

10

10

0.09

0.08

0.04

0.06

20

20

0.1

0.1

0.06

0.07

40

40

0.1

0.15

0.1

0.12

0.22

0.33

0.205

0.26

10 20 40

10 20 40

0.22 0.22 0.24

0.376 0.39 0.348

0.26 0.275 0.18

0.3 0.315 0.265

Table 5. TPoX Response Time for Each Transaction Type

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Power 750/PowerVM Order (inserts per second) Custacc (inserts per second) 1591 684

HP DL580G7/ VMware vSphere 2vCPU

1176 333

Table 5A. TPoX Database Populated Rate for Second Set (2 vCPU) of Configuration

A second configuration set on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 was added in order to restrict the VMs to run within the core, similar to the PowerVM virtualization configuration.10 Again, the database of each VM in this new configuration on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 was populated. The transaction rate for populating the database is shown in Table 5A. The results of this set of tests were compared with results for PowerVM technology, as shown in Figures 6, A and B. POWER/PowerVM still retained 2.3 times better performance than HP Intel/VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 technologies, even with reconfiguration using CPU affinity (VMware Scheduling Affinity group) on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. CPU utilization on both platforms remained close to identical.

Figure 5. TPoX Performances with VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 Virtual Machine Reconfiguration

10

In this set each virtual machine was configured to have two vCPUs, using the CPU affinity feature in VMware; the first vCPU was bound to the primary thread while the second vCPU of a VM was bound to secondary thread of a core. For the five-VM test, all 10 vCPUs were bound to one core (both primary and the secondary thread); for the 10-VM test, all 20 vCPUs were bound to two cores; for the 20-VM test, all 40 vCPUs were bound to four cores; and for 40-VM test, all 80 vCPUs were bound to eight cores. In each case each VM was able to leverage both primary and secondary threads concurrently.

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System Configuration for TPoX Benchmark (5 to 40 VM Scaling)

IBM Power 750 3.5 GHz DPSM mode, four sockets, 512 GB RAM, SMT4 enabled, PowerVM, AIX 7.1 is the host OS for each VM. VIOS is configured with 0.2 core/1 vCPU/ uncapped mode/ 4 GB RAM. Each LPAR is configured with 1 vCPU/ uncapped/3 GB RAM three LPARs have 0.2 cores and 2 LPARs have 0.1 core. Shared pool has one core 8 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, two LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has two cores 18 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, two LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has four cores 38 LPARs configured with 0.2core/ 1 vCPU/uncapped and two LPARs configured with 0.1 core/1 vCPU/ uncapped. Shared pool has eight cores HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 2.26 GHz, eight cores / 24 MB cache (4 sockets) Intel Xeon 7560 processors, 512 GB system RAM (HT and Turbo enabled in BIOS Intel VTx with EPT HW virtualization assist) VMware vSphere 4.1 update1. Each VM has guest OS RHEL6 GA. Each VM is given 2 vCPUs unlimited/3 GB memory. DB2 buffer pool for data is configured in each VM. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 and cpu1. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu3 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu7 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu15

# of VMs

Total Virtual % CPU Transactions CPUs Utilization per second

100

612.2

10

10

98

1155

20

20

98

2137

40

40

98

4169.8

10

100

259

10 20 40

20 40 80

100 100 100

490.5 997.9 1906.4

Table 6 TPoX Performance with VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 Virtual Machine Reconfiguration Edison: IBM Virtualization Performance White Paper Page 17

Consider how the response time improved with CPU scheduling affinity on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. The query response time was reduced by approximately 30 percent. However, the impact on other transactions response time was negligible. The question arose as to how these results would compare to previously published TPoX benchmark results. No published results using virtualization technologies existed, so Edison Group compared these results with those of published results for testing nonvirtualized systems on a comparable Intel Xeon 7560 system.11

Figure 6A. TPoX Query and Update Response Time

Figure 6B. TPoX Delete and Insert Response Time

In March 2010, Intel had published TPoX benchmark results on an Intel Xeon 7560 system with 32 cores/256 GB RAM using a 1 TB database in a non-virtualized environment. Further results can be found at http://tpox.sourceforge.net/TPoX_Results_X7560.pdf
11

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System Configuration for TPoX Benchmark (5 to 40 VM scaling)

IBM Power 750 3.5 GHz DPSM mode, four sockets, 512 GB RAM, SMT4 enabled, PowerVM, AIX 7.1 is the host OS for each VM. VIOS is configured with 0.2 core/1 vCPU/ uncapped mode/ 4 GB RAM. Each LPAR is configured with 1 vCPU/ uncapped/3 GB RAM 3 LPARs have 0.2 cores and two LPARs have 0.1 core Shared pool has one core 8 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, two LPARs are configured with 0.1/ 1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has two cores 18 LPARs are configured each with 0.2/1 vCPU/ uncapped/ 3 GB memory, two LPARs are configured with 0.1/1 vCPU/uncapped/3 GB memory, vios has 0.2/1 vCPU/uncapped/4 GB memory. Shared pool has four cores 38 LPARs are configured with 0.2core/ 1 vCPU/uncapped and 2 LPARs configured with 0.1core/1 vCPU/ uncapped. Shared pool has eight cores HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 2.26 GHz, eight cores / 24 MB cache (four sockets) Intel Xeon 7560 Processors, 512 GB system RAM (HT and Turbo enabled in BIOS Intel VTx with EPT HW virtualization assist) VMware vSphere 4.1 update1. Each VM has guest OS RHEL6 GA. Each VM is given two vCPU unlimited/3 GB memory. DB2 buffer pool for data is configured in each VM. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 and cpu1. Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu3 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu7 Schedule affinity is set to cpu0 to cpu15

# of VMs

Avg Avg Avg Total query update delete Virtual rsp rsp rsp CPUs (sec) (sec) (sec)

Avg insert rsp (sec)

0.09

0.08

0.03

0.05

10

10

0.09

0.08

0.04

0.06

20

20

0.1

0.1

0.06

0.07

40

40

0.1

0.15

0.1

0.12

10

0.145

0.3

0.245

0.26

10 20 40

20 40 80

0.17 0.16 0.17

0.36 0.39 0.345

0.285 0.25 0.25

0.33 0.275 0.28

Table 7 TPoX Response Time with VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 Reconfiguration

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These previously-published results were better than what was achieved in tests using the HP Intel Xeon 7560 system described here. The difference in these results could be attributed to differences in storage subsystem, database size, execution of a large number of software images such as guest OS, database middleware, etc. Most significant, however, is that the tests described here were conducted in a virtualized environment using VMware vSphere, which adds overhead in comparison to a nonvirtualized environment.

Summary of Results
Overall, PowerVM virtualization technology demonstrated superior performance over VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 in two different configurations, each configuration covering two different virtual machine densities featuring high resource contention. As demonstrated using the AIM7 and TPoX benchmarks, the difference in throughput performance was quite considerable throughout, ranging from 50 percent better to as much as 200 percent better on PowerVM technology.

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IBMs Virtualization Infrastructure: POWER7 Processor-Based Systems

The currently available POWER7 processor-based systems combine excellent performance, scalability, and modularity. IBMs clients realize a high return on their investments with flexible, responsive infrastructures that easily adapt and grow based on business needs. A virtualization hypervisor is built into Power Systems to provide superior performance over competitive systems which rely on third-party virtualization software such as the widely-deployed VMware vSphere. POWER7 processor-based systems offer balanced systems designs that automatically optimize workload performance and capacity at either a system or a virtual machine level. Features include:

TurboCore workload-optimizing mode for maximum per-core performance for databases. MaxCore for parallelization and maximum capacity throughput. Intelligent threading technology to utilize more threads when it benefits workloads. Intelligent Cache technology to optimize cache utilization, flowing from core to core. Intelligent Energy that maximizes performance dynamically when thermal conditions allow. Active Memory Expansion 12 that dynamically provides more memory on an asneeded basis. Active Memory Sharing that allows for logical over-commitment of physical memory and deduplication.

IBM PowerVM technology the virtualization software built into the POWER7 processor-based systems offers an unprecedented level of platform support, scalability, efficient resource utilization, flexibility, and heterogeneous server management. IBM PowerVM virtualization offers autonomic resource affinity, resulting in higher workload performance in a virtualized environment. IBM POWER7 Systems, and PowerVM technology with its efficient virtualization, are an excellent foundation for cloud computing environments.

12

Supported on AIX operating systems only.

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PowerVM Virtualization Technology

With IBM POWER processor-based systems and IBM PowerVM virtualization technologies, an organization can consolidate applications and servers using partitioning and virtualized system resources to achieve a more flexible and dynamic IT infrastructure. PowerVM delivers robust virtualization for IBM i, IBM AIX, and Linux environments on IBM POWER processor-based systems. The POWER Hypervisor is integrated as part of the system firmware and supports multiple operating environments on a single system. PowerVM virtualization technology offers the flexibility of combining dedicated and shared resources in the same partition. IBM Power Systems servers and PowerVM technology are designed to deliver a dynamic infrastructure that can help reduce costs, manage risk, and improve service levels.

Processor Virtualization
PowerVM technologys advanced dynamic logical partitioning (LPAR) capabilities allow a single partition to act as a completely separate AIX, IBM i, or Linux operating environment. Partitions can be assigned either dedicated or shared processor resources. With shared resources, PowerVM virtualization technology can automatically adjust pooled processor resources across multiple operating systems, borrowing processing power from idle partitions to handle high transaction volumes in other partitions. PowerVM technologys Micro-Partitioning supports up to 10 dynamic logical partitions per processor core. Depending upon the Power server, up to 1,000 independent virtualized servers can be run on a single physical Power server each virtualized server with its own fractional processor share, memory, and I/O resources. These partitions can be assigned at a granularity of 1/100th of a core. Consolidating systems with PowerVM technology can reduce operational costs, improve availability, ease management, and improve service levels, while allowing businesses to deploy applications quickly. Shared processor pools increase throughput by allowing for the automatic nondisruptive balancing of processing power between partitions assigned to shared pools. It also provides for the ability to reduce processor-based software licensing costs by capping the processor core resources used by a group of partitions. Shared dedicated capacity allows for the donation of spare CPU cycles, from dedicated processor partitions to a shared processor pool. The dedicated partition maintains absolute priority for dedicated CPU cycles. Enabling this feature can help to increase system utilization without compromising the computing power for critical workloads in a dedicated processor.

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Memory Virtualization
PowerVM technology features Active Memory Sharing, a technology that intelligently and dynamically reallocates memory from one partition to another for increased utilization, flexibility, and performance. Active Memory Sharing enables the sharing of a pool of physical memory among logical partitions on a single server. This helps reduce the need for reserve memory resource capacity in a consolidated environment by increasing the efficiency of memory utilization, driving down system costs. The memory is dynamically allocated among the partitions as needed, to optimize the usage of physical memory in the pool. Along with shared memory, PowerVM technology also supports dedicated memory allocation, which enables partitions having shared memory to coexist in the same system as partitions having dedicated memory.

I/O Virtualization
The Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) is an integral part of PowerVM technology. A specialpurpose partition, VIOS eliminates the need for dedicated network adapters, disk adapters and disk drives, and tape adapters and tape drives in the guest partitions running as VMs. It can reduce costs by virtualizing I/O resources to those partitions. VIOS owns the resources that are shared with clients; a physical adapter assigned to the VIOS partition can be shared by one or more other partitions. With VIOS, guest partitions can easily be created for test, development, or production purposes. PowerVM technology also supports dedicated I/O along with VIOS on the same system. Therefore, a single system can have I/O hosted by VIOS for some partitions and other partitions with dedicated I/O devices. An organization can thus reserve a dedicated VM of a given capacity that can be relied upon for high-priority and/or mission-critical workloads, while assigning other VMs to a general resource pool.

Partition Mobility
Live Partition Mobility facilitates the migration of a running AIX or Linux partition from one physical server to another without requiring application downtime for planned system maintenance, migrations, provisioning, and workload management.

Partition Hibernation
IBM POWER7 systems support Partition Hibernation, where a partition can be suspended and resumed at a later time. In a suspended state, a partitions resources can be used by other partitions while the suspended partitions state is stored in a paging

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space on a persistent storage device. Partition Hibernation can be used for resource balancing and for planned CEC outages for maintenance or upgrades.

Workload Partitioning
PowerVM technology also supports a software partitioning technology provided by the AIX operating system, a mode of virtualization capability called Workload Partitions (WPARs). Introduced with AIX Version 6, WPAR is independent of hardware features. It enables consolidation of workloads on a single AIX operating system by providing isolation between workloads running in different WPARs. From an application perspective, each workload is running in its own operating system environment. A key feature of WPAR is mobility, a running WPAR can be relocated from one VM to another on the same operating system platform. This enables applications to be migrated to another system during planned maintenance operations, to balance workloads, to provision rapidly to meet growth dynamically, and to improve energy efficiency by further consolidating on the fly during low load periods.

Systems Management
IBM Systems Director (Express, Standard, and Enterprise Editions) for Power servers supports the PowerVM environment. It is IBMs tool for heterogeneous platform management of Power Systems, IBM System x, IBM System z, and IBM System Storage systems. IBM Systems Director Editions support advanced management functions such as system discovery, workload lifecycle management, health monitoring, system updates, and topology mappings. It also provides the ability to take action on defined event thresholds of monitored system components. IBM Systems Director VMControl transforms Systems Director from managing virtualization to using virtualization in order to better manage an entire IT infrastructure. It is offered as a plug-in option included with the Systems Director Standard and Enterprise Editions. Together, IBM Systems Director and VMControl help reduce the total cost of ownership in a virtual environment by increasing asset utilization and reducing the time and effort required to deploy workloads. Using them, administrators can maintain high levels of availability through proactive monitoring and collaborative troubleshooting, reducing costs further. VMControl is available in three editions, to suit the varying levels of virtualization deployment at client sites:

VMControl Express Edition provides basic VM lifecycle management.

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VMControl Standard Edition adds virtual appliance lifecycle management to capture information from active systems and store it in a repository as reusable system images (called virtual appliances). VMControl Enterprise Edition adds system pool lifecycle management. It allows users to create and manage system pools or groups of virtual appliances deployed across multiple physical servers as easily as managing a single entity. The advanced virtualization management capabilities of VMControl provide a pathway for organizations to build sophisticated cloud computing environments.

PowerVM Virtualization Technology Advantages

PowerVM virtualization technology offers a secure virtualization environment built on the advanced RAS features and excellent performance of the Power Systems platform. PowerVM technology delivers numerous advantages, including:

High resource utilization PowerVM technology makes the most efficient utilization of IT investments by virtualizing resources that include processors, memory, and I/O across multiple virtual machines. Flexibility PowerVM technology runs on all Power Systems servers, from blades to high-end servers. It provides the greatest flexibility by supporting both dedicated and shared resource models. Unlike VMware vSphere on the x86 platform, PowerVM virtualization technology allows virtual machines to have all dedicated resources (CPU, memory and I/O) , or all shared resources (virtual processors, virtual memory, virtual I/O), or a mix of dedicated and shared resources in the same LPAR. Quality of Service PowerVM technology ensures that workloads achieve high quality of service even when LPARs share processors from a shared pool. Scalability PowerVM technology can reduce server purchases by supporting partitions as small as 1/10 of a processor. POWER7 processor-based high-end systems support up to 256 physical processors in a single LPAR and up to 1,000 partitions in a system. Availability Live Partition Mobility (LPM) helps eliminate planned downtime by allowing partitions to be moved to another server while running, freeing hardware for upgrades or maintenance without interrupting productive operations. In a system pool, LPM enables autonomic load balancing across multiple systems. Resource pools IBM PowerVM technology has enhanced CPU and memory affinity to improve performance of resource-intensive workloads, such as database workloads, across multiple virtual machines sharing resources in a system. IBM VMControl enhancements make it easier to deploy and manage large numbers of

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these virtual machines in a shared resource pool spanning one or more physical systems.

Integrated Virtualization
Because of its level of sophistication and maturity, PowerVM technology is commonly employed with enterprise-class applications and workloads. Power Systems servers implement virtualization architecture with components embedded in the hardware, firmware, and operating system software, all while running with significantly less overhead. The capabilities of this integrated virtualization architecture are significantly different and, in many areas, more advanced than VMware vSphere and other thirdparty software, which must be installed on x86 hardware that leverages hardware-assist virtualization optimizations. Power Systems servers and PowerVM virtualization technology capabilities are more granular and more closely integrated than are those of VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V (or equivalent x86-based virtualization tools), or Oracle VM for SPARC. The Power Systems platform also benefits from numerous industry-leading availability optimization features. These distinctive capabilities have led to widespread adoption of Power Systems servers to support the significantly more demanding performance and uptime requirements of transaction- and database-intensive systems.

Greater Partition Isolation

By enabling firmware-based partitions, PowerVM technology provides greater partition isolation than software-based virtualization technologies. Firmware-based logical partitions (or virtual machines) reduce the potential for performance bottlenecks and contribute to higher levels of availability and security than does software-based virtualization. They also contribute to increased linear scalability.

Partitioning and Workload Management Integration

The importance of workload management cannot be overstated. Partitioning creates the potential to utilize capacity very efficiently. The extent that this potential is realized in practice depends on the mechanisms that allocate system resources, monitor, and control workload execution across partitions. If these mechanisms are ineffective, a high proportion of system capacity may remain idle at any given time. Close integration of partitioning and workload management capabilities help prevent surges in workloads running in individual partitions from impacting performance and availability. POWER7 processor-based systems have a large number of cores per socket,

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abundant memory, and a great deal of I/O bandwidth per core. They also support a high number of threads per core with simultaneous multithreading (SMT). Different workloads can benefit from different processor core thread settings; processor-intensive workloads might benefit from using one thread (SMT1) while workloads that are I/Ointensive can benefit from using several. POWER7 processor-based systems support up to an SMT4 setting. Thus, POWER7 processor-based systems consolidate an unprecedented number of partitions and can handle workload surges more effectively, for demonstrably higher performance.

Accommodating Greater Consolidation Density

PowerVM technology is optimized to handle business-critical systems and complex multi-partition production environments. IBM Power Systems and PowerVM technologies allow a high consolidation ratio and thus greater levels of efficiency in utilization.

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Conclusions
Virtualization has become a pervasive means of consolidating workloads on fewer systems, controlling server sprawl and minimizing costs. With IBM Power Systems and PowerVM virtualization technologies, organizations can achieve virtualization with outstanding performance. For every benchmark and every scenario covered in this paper, IBM Power Systems with PowerVM technology demonstrated superior performance and greater efficiency in using system capacity at higher utilization, as well as at higher resource contention (over-commit levels), and superior scaling with higher throughput performance. In summary, this study has shown that IBM POWER7 systems and PowerVM technology have demonstrated:

Higher throughput performance for both AIM7 and TPoX benchmarks, ranging from 50 percent better to as much as 200 percent better. Higher efficiency in resource over-commit mode (higher consolidation ratio), with the response time on PowerVM virtualization technology two to six times shorter, compared to response time for VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1, as the number of VMs scaled from five to 40 VMs. Higher processor affinity by default (40 VMs sharing eight cores), retaining 2.3 times better performance than HP Intel/VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 technologies, even with reconfiguration using CPU affinity (VMware Scheduling Affinity group) on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. Efficient leveraging of maximum configured processor capacity. Accurate accounting of resource usage within a VM. Tighter integration across system, hypervisor, and guest OS. Better performance overall than Intel Xeon 7560 /VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1.

The charts that follow summarize the results of the tests described in this paper. The first the AIM7 performance benchmark 32-core VM scaling (scale-up) results shows that PowerVM on POWER7 delivers superior scale-up efficiency that outperforms VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 by up to 115 percent while running the same Linux workloads and virtualized resources.

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AIM7 Performance Benchmark 32 VM Scale-out on 32 cores

VMware vSphere 4.1 on HP DL580(1vcpu) PowerVM on Power 750(1vcpu)
700000 600000 500000 400000 300000 200000 100000 0 1VM 2VM 4VM 8VM 16VM 32VM

VMware vSphere 4.1 on HP DL580(2vcpu)

Jobs/min

Number of Virtual Machines

In fact, PowerVM on POWER7 retains its superiority even configured with an additional virtual CPU per VM. The second chart the TPOX performance benchmark 5 VM per core (scale-out) shows that PowerVM on POWER7 delivers robust scale-out efficiency that outperforms VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 by up to 201 percent while running the same workloads and virtualized resources.

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TPOX Performance Benchmark 40 VM Scale-out on 8 cores 5 VMs per core

VMware vSphere 4.1 on HP DL580(1vcpu) PowerVM on Power 750(1vcpu)

5000 4000

VMware vSphere 4.1 on HP DL580(2vcpu)

Jobs/min

3000 2000 1000 0 5VM 10VM 20VM 40VM

Number of Virtual Machines

PowerVM maximizes workload performance and system resources while running multiple virtual machines on a core better than does VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. IBM Power Systems with the superior performance of PowerVM virtualization technology and with features such as reliability, security, high availability, and resiliency are well positioned for cloud computing and smarter planet solutions today and in the future.

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Appendices
Appendix 1 Benchmark Configuration Information
IBM started competitive research on PowerVM virtualization in 2009 and published two papers 13 comparing IBM POWER processor-based systems and PowerVM virtualization technologies to Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere 4.0 update 1 running on an HP ProLiant DL 370 G6/ Intel Xeon 5570 processors. Both these studies, which show the superior performance of POWER processors and PowerVM technology, took a simplified approach to answering the two most commonly expressed considerations in deploying virtualization technologies: 1. How efficient is the technology? 2. How well does the technology scale? The current study builds upon those simple premises to include two additional considerations: 1. How efficient is the technology when resources are in high contention? 2. How well does it scale as virtual machine density increases?

Test Bed Setup

The servers employed for this study were chosen for their equivalencies from the standpoint of core and socket count.

IBM POWER7 Processor-Based Server

The IBM POWER7 processor-based IBM Power 750 Express system was used in this study to demonstrate the capabilities of IBMs PowerVM virtualization technology. The system was configured with four sockets, 3.5 GHz, 32 cores (eight per socket) supporting up to four threads (SMT4) per core, and 512 GB of RAM.

13

A Comparison of PowerVM and x86-Based Virtualization Performance, Oct 2009 http://www-03.IBM.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101574 A Comparison of PowerVM and VMware Virtualization Performance, April 2010 http://www.spectrumconsulting.co.nz/aix/wp-content/uploads/PowerVM_VMware.pdf

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HP ProLiant DL580 G7 Intel Xeon X7560 (2.26GHz/8-core/24MB/130W) Processor

HP ProLiant DL580 G7 is a rack-mounted, high-performance Intel Xeon 7560-based server; this system was selected to demonstrate the capabilities of VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 virtualization technologies. The system was configured with four sockets, with eight cores each, supporting up to two threads per core (HT mode). The system was also enabled for Turbo Mode, Intel VTx with EPT HW Virtualization assist.

Infrastructure Configuration
System Configuration IBM Power 750, 3.5 GHz, eight cores per socket POWER7 Processors, 128 GB RAM per socket. Storage Configuration IBM DS4800 (4 GB cache), one 4 Gb Fiber Channel adapter. Each array has 12 (32 GB) disks using RAID5. Each array is shared by four virtual machines, each getting 40 GB virtual disk space. IBM DS4800 (4 GB cache), one 4 Gb Fiber Channel adapter. Each array has 12 (32 GB) disks using RAID5. Each array is shared by four virtual machines, each getting 40 GB virtual disk space.

HP ProLiant DL 580 G7, 2.26 GHz, eight cores / 24 MB (four sockets) Intel Xeon 7560 Processors, 512 GB system RAM.

Software Used
Category Hypervisor Guest OS Middleware PowerVM Technology Power Hypervisor (IBM Power 750 in-built hypervisor) SuSE 11, SP1 AIX 7.1 IBM DB2 v9.7 VMware vSphere VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1 SuSE 11, SP1 GA x86_64 RHEL6 GAx86_64 IBM DB2 v9.7

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VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 Virtual Machine Technical Configuration Details

1. VMware Virtual Machine was created using Virtual Machine version 7, which is compatible with vSphere 4.0 hosts and greater, and provided greater virtual machine functionality than earlier versions. 2. A Virtual Disk LSI Logic Parallel adapter was used. It was noted (in vSphere Help) that the LSI Logic Parallel adapter and the LSI Logic SAS adapter offer equivalent performance. 3. The VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 system was updated to the latest VMware Tools. 4. Scheduling affinity group was used to bind cores to virtual machines. 5. Memory affinity was enabled. 6. vSpheretop ab and vmstat were collected from the virtual machine.

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Appendix 2 General Benchmark Descriptions

The performance tests described here characterized hypervisor efficiency and scalability. Both benchmarks stress the entire stack of application, middleware, OS, and hypervisors. Neither benchmark requires external clients to drive the load. The following tests were conducted: 1. Demonstrate the effect that adding virtual processors incrementally has on throughput performance in a single VM. Where direct performance comparisons were to be made, the testing team limited the number of virtual processors to the lesser of the maximum supported across the two virtualization platforms. Note: While consolidation deployments by definition entail multiple VMs, understanding how each technology deals with processor scaling in the simplest possible configuration within a single VM provides insights into hypervisor efficiency. 2. Demonstrate the effect that adding VMs has on throughput performance. Throughput is monitored as the number of VMs is scaled from 1 to n. Throughput in each VM was also evaluated using varying numbers of virtual processors and load. Note: This will show the effect of multiple VMs running on a system in a nonover-commit as well as an over-commit resource environment. Each of these tests (1 and 2) was run on different workloads. The tests included running the same workloads (homogeneous) or a mix of workloads (heterogeneous) across multiple VMs concurrently. This revealed how each class of workload is affected by the respective types of resource scaling in each test. To ensure fair comparison across platforms and to remove variability across each set of tests, the following actions were taken:

Similar VM configurations were deployed in terms of virtual processors and memory allocated per VM. The same set of benchmark parameters was used across platforms. Tuning was performed based on best practices of respective platforms (VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1, RHEL 6.0, AIX 7.1, DB2 tuning).

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Addendum: Benchmarks Comparing PowerVM on Power 750 with vSphere 5 on Intel Westmere EX-Based System
At the time that the systems were tested for this white paper, VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 was most current version available from VMware. Subsequently, VMware announced a significant new release: version 5, which includes nearly 200 new or enhanced features and capabilities such areas as deployment, storage, management, availability, and security. The central improvement to virtualization and consolidation capacity (and thus to this white paper) in version 5 is that vSphere VMs can now be configured with up to 1 terabyte of memory and 32 virtual CPUs. VMware is touting this version (supporting VMs that are up to four times more powerful than previous versions) as the way to accelerate a data centers move to a more efficient cloud infrastructure. Edison sought to assess whether a commensurate improvement in throughput performance accompanied vSpheres greater vCPU capacity. It also wanted to investigate whether PowerVM retains the considerable advantage over vSphere in performance and hardware utilization that it demonstrated in the original edition of the white paper.

Summary
Edison wished to evaluate a comparison of PowerVM performance against the latest solutions that the x86-based VMware platform has to offer on a similar class of server hardware. Therefore, on the vSphere side, the tests described in this addendum were run on an HP ProLiant DL580 G7 E7-4870 server, which features the X5600-series Xeon chip architecture (Westmere-EX) and contains 40 cores (10 cores per chip). As in the previously published edition of this white paper, PowerVM was run on an IBM Power 750 system, based on the POWER7 processor. Edison reviewed and analyzed the results of the open source AIM7 benchmark testing applied to the three virtualization solutions VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1, VMware vSphere 5, and PowerVM in a scale-up scenario of 32 vCPUs within a single VM. A second test a vCPU scale-out scenario of 32 vCPUs using eight VMs was evaluated that compares vSphere 5 with PowerVM.

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The key findings, summarized, are as follows:

In terms of throughput performance, vSphere 5 demonstrated no improvement over vSphere 4.1 update 1; in fact, it demonstrated slightly lower performance overall. PowerVM on Power 750 outperforms vSphere 5 on the Intel-based system by up to 131 percent, running the same workloads across virtualized resources. PowerVM on Power 750 outperforms VMware vSphere 5 by up to 525 percent when running multiple VMs and workloads, despite the test Intel x86 system (WestmereEX) containing a greater number of cores (40 versus 32).

The benchmark results reveal that PowerVM virtualization technology on POWER7 processor-based platforms retains as great a performance advantage over VMware vSphere 5 on Intel x86 platforms as it does over VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. Therefore, PowerVM virtualization technology remains the consolidation system of choice for organizations wishing to realize the full advantages of greater VM density, as was demonstrated in the earlier edition of the white paper.

The Benchmarks
To obtain the results presented in this addendum, the AIM7 benchmark (described on Page 7 of this white paper) was employed in two different scenarios. Once again, the Power Linux version used on PowerVM virtualization technology was SuSE 11 SP1. SuSE 11 SP1 x86_64 was used as guest OS on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. Scale-Up Benchmark This scenario tested three platforms: VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 and VMware vSphere 5, each running on an HP ProLiant DL580 G7 E7-4870 server; and PowerVM running on an IBM Power 750 system. AIM7 was scaled in one, two, four, eight, 16, and 32 vCPUs within a single VM. Scaling was near linear on both the POWER7 processor/PowerVM technology-based systems and both of the Intel/VMware vSphere platforms. Running the same workloads across virtualized resources, the POWER7 processor/PowerVM system demonstrated superior performance well over twice the percentage of either Intel/VMware vSphere 4.1 or Intel/VMware vSphere 5 at one, two, four, and eight vCPU configurations. At the top end for vSphere 4.1 update 1 (8 vCPUs), PowerVM technology demonstrated a 103 percent advantage; while at the top end for vSphere 5 , PowerVM technology demonstrated a substantial 131 percent advantage (Figure 1).
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NOTE: The VM and vCPU configurations and the numeric test result data points can be found in the tables following the graphs for both tests in this addendum.

AIM7 SingleVM Scale-up

PowerVM 600000 500000
Jobs/min

vSphere5

vSphere4.1

400000 300000 200000 100000 0 1 2 4 8 16 32

# of vcpus

Figure 1. AIM7 Single VM Scale-Up

Table 1 shows the details on throughput and CPU utilization for each configuration. As in the tests conducted for the original study, the VMs on all three platforms were configured as close to identically as possible. In the case of PowerVM, each logical partition (LPAR) was given 3 GB RAM, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 virtual processors. In the case of VMware vSphere, each VM was given 3 GB RAM, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 virtual processors with the remainder left at default options.

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System Configuration for AIM7 Benchmark (1 to 32 VM Scaling)

IBM Power 750 3.6 GHz, 4 sockets, 384 GB RAM, SMT4-enabled, PowerVM and SLES11 SP1 (Power Linux) One core one vCPU Two cores two vCPUs Four cores four vCPUs Eight cores four vCPUs 16 cores 16 vCPUs 32 cores 32 vCPUs HP ProLiant DL580 G7, Intel Xeon E7 4870 2.4 GHz, 640 GB RAM, 4 sockets, VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 and SLES11 SP1 (x86_64) One vCPU Two vCPUs Four vCPUs Eight vCPUs HP ProLiant DL580 G7, Intel Xeon E7 4870 2.4 GHz, 640 GB RAM, 4 sockets, VMware vSphere 5 and SLES11 SP1 (x86_64) One socket one vCPU One socket two vCPUs One socket four vCPUs One socket eight vCPUs One socket 16 vCPUs One socket 32 vCPUs

Cores in the System

Virtual CPUs

Jobs/Min

% CPU Utilization

32 32 32 32 32 32

1 2 4 8 16 32

19027 37751 74624 144680 287559 540666

3.09% 6.19% 12.38% 25.00% 50.00% 98.00%

40 40 40 40

1 2 4 8

9173 18287 36231

2.90% 5.48% 10.49% 20.42%

71239

40 40 40 40 40 40

1 2 4 8 16 32

9018 17898.7 35379

4.42% 6.85% 11.79% 21.62% 41.24% 80.34%

69077
130770 233684

Table 1. AIM7 Benchmark Single Virtual Machine Scale-Up

An interesting revelation can be seen more clearly in the table than the graph, where the former top limit of eight vCPUs for vSphere has been highlighted in each version. Not only is vSphere 5 no better than vSphere 4.1 update 1 in terms of scale-up efficiency as reflected in throughput performance, it is actually slightly less efficient.

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As explained on Page 10 of this white paper, many factors contribute to this superior performance, including: PowerVM technology efficiency, IBM POWER7 SMT4 technology, IBM POWER7 core efficiency and IBM POWER7 higher core frequency. Furthermore, PowerVM on Power 750 systems can leverage all system resources in order to maximize workload performance. Scale-Out Benchmark This scenario tested VMware vSphere 5 running on an HP ProLiant DL580 G7 E7-4870 server against PowerVM running on an IBM Power 750 system. AIM7 was scaled to eight VMs using 32 vCPUs per VM, configuring a total of 256 vCPUs. Running the same workloads across virtualized resources, the POWER7 processor/PowerVM -based system demonstrated a very substantial 525 percent advantage over Intel/VMware vSphere 5.

AIM7 Multiple VM scale-out (32 vcpus per VM)

PowerVM vSphere5

600000 500000
Jobs/Min

400000 300000 200000 100000 0

8 VM

Figure 2. AIM7 Multiple VM Scale-Out

It is important to note that the difference in efficient use of hardware resources between the two systems. The server used to run the vSphere workloads contains more cores (40) than does the Power 750 hardware. Yet it is unable to leverage the greater hardware capacity to achieve superior or even comparable throughput performance. Table 2, below, shows that the workload on each platform consumed all the capacity in the system (i.e., 100 percent CPU utilization).

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System Configuration for AIM7 Benchmark (1 to 32 VM Scaling) IBM Power 750 3.6 Ghz, 4 sockets, 384 GB RAM, SMT4enabled, Power VM and SLES11 SP1 (Power Linux) Eight VM - each VM has four cores / 32 vCPUs HP Proliant DL580 G7, Intel Xeon E7 4870 2.4 Ghz, 640 GB RAM, 4 sockets, VMware vSphere 5, SLES11 SP1 (x84 64) Eight VM - each VM has 1 socket / 32 vCPUs

Cores in the # of System VMs

Virtual CPUs

Jobs/Min

% CPU Utilization

32

256

500,721.10

100%

40

256

79,626.10

100%

Table 2. AIM7 Benchmark Multiple Virtual Machine Scale-Out

Conclusion
As shown in this addendum, IBM PowerVM on POWER 7-based systems demonstrate the same distinct and considerable advantages over VMware vSphere 5 in workload throughput performance on x86 Intel-based platforms as over vSphere 4.1 update 1. The edge that POWER7/PowerVM has over Intel/vSphere remains linearly substantial as VMs and vCPUs are scaled, becoming ever more significant as workloads increase. A data center scaling up to a cloud-supporting infrastructure or large-scale enterprise applications would have to purchase, deploy, provision, and maintain a good deal more hardware and software to achieve the same workload productivity possible with PowerVM on POWER7. This dilutes the multiple cost advantages delivered via consolidation, and can increase total cost of ownership in the form of a more complex infrastructure to manage and more time devoted to systems maintenance.

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