Enterprise Apps More Efficient Under VMware?

For a few years, the main rationale for virtualization has been consolidation of poorly used server resources.

Take a bunch of applications that are barely using the servers they're running on, pop them into virtual machines, and have them share a single physical machine.

It took a little longer for people to get their head wrapped around using VMware for larger, enterprise-style applications.  I mean, if you weren't going after massive consolidation, what was the point?

There was still a strong rationale for virtualizing, but it pointed more to fast provisioning, being able to relocate running applications, exploiting things like DRS, HA and SRM, and so on.

Still a good thing to do, but for a different set of reasons.

And now, over the last few weeks, evidence has begun to emerge that -- well -- maybe it IS the case that there's a consolidation benefit as well for these enterprise-style applications. 

And the results are eye-opening to some of us ...

The First Shot -- Microsoft Exchange Running In VMs

Chad Sakac (aka The Virtual Geek) has been working with various teams at VMware, posting results of joint testing regarding Exchange 2007 running on beefy (virtualized) servers. 

The bottom line: they can make a very strong case that you can get more production Exchange users running on a single 4-way multi-core server running virtualized than it's physical equivalent.

Put differently: Exchange environments run more efficiently when they're virtualized.

So, why might this be? 

Wel, consider that Microsoft is pushing a scale-out, shared-nothing architecture these days for Exchange 2007.  This can result in server sprawl, since not all of the entities in an Exchange environment can completely (and efficiently) use their allocated (physical) server resources.

But I think there's more going on here -- can even a single Exchange server make the most of 4 quad-core processors and 256GB of RAM?  Or 6-cores when they come out?  Or can we say the same for most any application for that matter?

The Microsoft Exchange team has been pushing the idea of scale-out servers for Exchange 2007 (using DAS rather than NAS or SAN) for a while.  Sure, servers are cheap -- until you have a lot of them -- and then they're not.

Keep in mind, the goal of this particular exercise was to see how far you could go with Exchange in a virtualized environment.  That same benefit could be translated into cost savings (e.g. smaller servers), or perhaps more efficient operational management (using VMware tools, for example).

Either way, there's a strong case that customers come out ahead by virtualizing their environment for an enterprise-class application such as Exchange.

The Second Shot -- Microsoft SharePoint Running In VMs

Same effect, different application.

This time, the goal of the EMC teams was to virtualize an environment and show equivalent performance, but far fewer physical resources, this time expressed as "power savings". 

As in a 74% power savings.  That's right, the virtualized environment uses a scant 26% of the juice that the physical one provided, and performed as fast (or faster) than the physical one.

If you prefer hardware cost savings, I'm sure someone can express the difference that way as well.  Or, conversely, equivalent hardware configurations with the virtualized one offering signicant levels of performance.

Architecturally, there are a lot of similarities between Exchange and SharePoint in terms of logical server applications, preference for a scale-out approach, and so on.

I don't know how much work has been done with SQLserver, but -- ya know -- I wouldn't be surprised to see more of the same.

The Third Shot -- Oracle 11g Running in VMs

But, lest you think we're just picking on Microsoft environments, there's another eye-opener in the same vein from The Oracle Storage Guy (yes, another EMC employee, but a good read!)

He did a side-by side with Oracle's approach to 11g (e.g. 11g RAC and all that it implies with licensing) and a similar config using the more modestly priced 11g SE running in VMs.  The VMs provide many of the same benefits that the more pricey Oracle edition offers: load balancing, HA, advanced replication management through SRM, etc.

On this test, he rings a couple of bells.

First, the virtualized environment is far cheaper.  Licensing cost appears to be the major culprit here.

Second, the virtualized environment delivers far more TPC-Cs than the physical one. 

He doesn't document this, but I bet the virtualized environment is easier to set up and manage as well.

So, What's Going On Here?

I have a theory.  It's a slightly sinister one, so please don't assume this is EMC's official position, because it's not.

I think vendors like Microsoft and Oracle are getting hammered by low-cost scale-out solutions that can be delivered as a service, rather than a product.  Google Mail and Amazon's EC2 come to mind.

I think that they're doing anything they can do to drive cost out of the equation, or (in the case of Oracle) drive higher license revenues.

So both vendors are promoting these scale-out, shared-nothing architectures in an effort to compete.  Full disclosure: we at EMC notice this because these proposed solutions have no external storage -- everything is done within the server in a (misguided) effort to save TCO. 

But -- in each case -- it appears that the proposed enterprise-style application doesn't know how to fully and efficiently exploit modern server hardware.  Or, in the case of Oracle, any attempt to do so will require very expensive licenses that don't appear to deliver the goods -- at least, compared to using VMware.

Another disclaimer: these consolidated enterprise-style workloads drive some fairly serious I/O patterns. 

Not surprisingly, we did our testing on EMC storage products.  I wouldn't assume that the same results can always be achieved with other storage platforms.  You'll see evidence of this if you follow the links and see the underlying storage profiles that were generated.

And I Think We'll Find More

I'm taking bets that when we get to things like SAP, Oracle Applications, SQLserver, Documentum, etc. etc. we're going to find more of the same -- generally speaking, enterprise-style applications will run better in virtualized environments.

They use less server resources.  They exploit available server resources more efficiently.  They have important features like load-balancing, HA and replication management "baked in" via ESXi.  And they give operations staff an important and standardized tool for provisioning and managing many aspects of the environment.

I'm even willing to go out on a limb here and state a possibility for which there is absolutely NO hard evidence: I bet when we get around to DW/BI environments, we'll find many more examples of the same.

What do you think?

Courteous comments welcome, as always.

Comments

[marc farley]

Chuck,

This is consistent with my experience. It's not very intuitive, but it appears to be the way things work.

[mgbrit]

Obviously, this depends upon how you measure efficiency, but yes, I would agree with you Chuck.
Typically customers generally left Exchange alone when virtualizing their other applications. More recently, the world has moved on and all apps are now being virtualized for encapsulation - to allow for full management of the app workload within a VMotion farm. This has provided those in the industry with lots of observational data that confirms this is the case.

The argument on whether to virtualize or not was won a while back. It's now HOW one should virtualize, now that advanced VM features are coming to the forefront.

[shiningarts]

I can’t resist posting a quote from the Bible:

"Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor." (Mark 6:4)

I understand that Documentum is not EMC's most strategic product because it doesn't exactly seem to fit into EMC's grand goals. However, VMWare/EMC is missing out on one very interesting opportunity here right now. Like a prophet is rarely honored in his hometown, a jewel like content management and archive system such as Documentum fails to be noticed in its own company. Even the blogger of this very site overlooks its own self-fulfilling prophecy logged a year ago. Please read an article published in NY Times ( http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/microsofts-sharepoint-thrives-in-the-recession/ ) or read this blog ( http://www.brilliantleap.com/blog/2009/08/notable-quotes--the-ny-times-on-sharepoints-recession-resistant-success.html ) where I posted my comment as follows:

“A couple years back while I was working as an EMC Documentum consultant, I saw Microsoft SharePoint snatched up several of the competitive customers. As a member of Microsoft software family, SharePoint comes with its own benefits and liabilities at the same time; especially, during the recession like this, the benefits outweigh the liabilities for the most customers. To the benefit side, SharePoint is quite attractive because of its intrinsic interface with Office, Outlook, and the rest of the Microsoft applications. As liabilities, I think, SharePoint only works with SQLServer which lacks of flexibility. Also, SharePoint structure tends to become unmanageable and is not scalable as it grows and can result in server sprawl because it is deficient in fundamental architectural integrity. This makes the SharePoint much more expensive down the road. This trait is nothing new in the Microsoft culture because architectural integrity is not their strong suit. (One only has to look as far as its latest Vista, for example, and the newest search engine Bing for evidence of this.) However, as we all know, although we can’t do without it for now, we will eventually be freed from Microsoft’s virtual monopoly for business applications if the cloud computing condensates successfully finally. That said, I totally concur with the article published in the NY Times since customers look to save nickels and dimes without thinking about the real consequences of how their choices now will affect their ability to grow in the future.”

“As a long time IT professional, I have learned that any software or architecture that hopes to last MUST mimic the nature since nature existed long before humanity and will continue long after we are gone, period. One of the important signatures of nature is simplicity. Software needs to be designed with simplity in mind because it is the key element that makes software resilient and sustainable. A couple days ago, VMWare acquired SpringSource, an excellent enterprise open source company. I love to use Apache Tomcat web application server over other web application servers out there including WebLogic or WebSphere not because I can use it for free, but because it’s real simple and intuitive to use. SpringSource is a major contributor to Apache Tomcat open source community. Since SpringSource runs on a Java platform and .NET framework at the same time, the combination of VMWare and SpringSource have the potential be a real game changer if EMC learns its lesson from Microsoft: It is prudent for EMC take a look at how Microsoft integrates SharePoint content management system into their core enterprise infrastructure. EMC has an opportunity to integrate Documentum, its flagship content management and archive system, into the mix of VMWare/SpringSource to overtake its rivals. Furthermore, the cloud computing combination of VMWare/SpringSource is remarkably superior to any of its competition, including Microsoft’s Azure, because it reflects architectural characteristics of the Mother Nature.”

Also, check this article out:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-10307636-240.html