The first vmark results for Nehalem are posted

2009-04-10T03:58:41Z

I was poking around on the vmark results site earlier on the hunch that somebody might have posted new results based on Nehalem processors and there are some.

The link to the site is here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html

These preliminary results are interesting since they vary on the specific Nehalem processor used and have "optimized" system configurations to run on but they show a reasonably consistent jump of double or more in the performance that they are providing. I need to look a little deeper to see how close to "deployable" these configurations may be but the results are encouraging. I found it interesting that most of the VMware builds referenced for the tests were all slightly different and all but 1 apparently for vSphere beta versions. One of the Nehalem based server results is for an ESX 3.5 implementation and shows the relative performance gain in that implementation.

All of these new generation servers are offering some interesting upgraded features and some new power and management techniques that will likely raise the stakes in "value" per virtual machine and lowered costs through power, cooling, ease of deployment, better LAN access, etc.

I'd love to hear from any early adopters who are deploying the first shipments in any fashion. I am a reseller and we are quoting many but haven't yet shipped any.

Bill

Will Nahelem change the cluster rules for Intel? Doesn't look like it.

2009-03-12T17:02:55Z

In case anyone else is interested, I began to wonder what the impending announcement of servers based on Intel's next generation Nehalem processors might do to mixed ESX clusters. Since you can't mix AMD and Intel processors in a cluster, I was concerned that the NUMA architecture described for the upcoming Nehalem might have the same challenges when mixing with older, non-NUMA XEON processors.

Here is a link to the coversation on the Intel Server Room that includes a response I received from an Intel specialist:

http://communities.intel.com/thread/3099

Now the question needs to be answered by the VMware folks to corroborate. The next big question in my mind will be what affect, if any, will the next generation of ESX server have on this. I assume it won't make any difference but I will be looking to confirm this.

Bill Stebelski's Blog

The first vmark results for Nehalem are posted

Will Nahelem change the cluster rules for Intel? Doesn't look like it.