T H E
TOLLY
GROUP
No. 208322 September 2008
Oracle Corporation Test
Oracle VM Summary
Performance Evaluation of Oracle VM Server
Virtualization Software
Premise: Server resources often are
Test Highlights
underutilized. It often is easy to
accommodate the need for additional
A single Oracle VM server processes almost 94% of the
server resources by adding more database transactions handled by a bare-metal server with 50
hardware. But in today’s cost- concurrent users
conscious landscape, with an empha- Delivers 72% more database transactions when running two
virtualized Oracle VM servers in a single machine, versus a
sis on energy efficiency and manag-
single Oracle VM server
ing power consumption, server virtu-
Delivers 82.4% and 82.5% of the transaction load normally
alization emerges as a viable solu-
handled by a bare-metal server when two virtual servers are
tion to maximize server utilization,
paired together to support 30 users
achieve efficiency, provide scalabil-
Provides rapid deployment with pre-configured virtual machine
ity, while also being easy to deploy.
templates of Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle Database
racle Corporation commis-
O sioned The Tolly Group to
Percentage of Database Transactions Delivered by
evaluate the performance of
32-Bit Oracle VM Server vs. Bare-Metal Server
Oracle VM running in a 32-bit Linux
as Reported by Swingbench 2.2
server environment and supporting a
variety of workloads. 100%
100% 100%
92.5% 93.6%
Tolly Group engineers examined the
transactions processed
80%
82.4% 80.4% 82.5% 80.5%
performance of virtual servers run-
Percentage of
60%
ning on Oracle VM compared to
typical bare-metal servers that 40%
consume more real estate and cost 20%
more to deploy.
0%
Engineers also conducted the same Physical Virtual (1 VM) Virtual machine Virtual machine
Physical Virtual server Dual virtual Dual virtual
1 of 2 2 of 2
(1 VM)
tests on two virtual machines to server server
(1 of 2 VMs) (2 of 2 VMs)
prove the performance scalability of
the Oracle VM virtualization 30 users 50 users
technology.
Tests were conducted in July 2008.
Figure 1
Source: The Tolly Group, July 2008
© 2008 The Tolly Group Page 1

Oracle Corporation Oracle VM
Executive Single Virtual Machine Transaction Performance
vs. a Single Bare-Metal Server
Summary as Reported by Swingbench 2.2
Oracle VM supports a
transactions processed
variety of workloads 100%
100% 100%
efficiently in a virtual- 92.5% 93.6%
80%
Percentage of
ized environment with
60%
nominal overhead com-
pared to a bare-metal 40%
server. It also demon-
20%
strates scalability by
0%
reporting a 72%
30 50 30 50
performance improve-
ment with two virtual Physical Single virtual machine
machines compared to
a single virtual machine. Machine type and number of users
Note: Single VM performance indicates Oracle VM delivers 92.5% and 93.6% the
Large IT organizations are
performance of a single bare-metal server for the user scenarios tested.
either deploying or
Figure 2
considering server virtu- Source: The Tolly Group, July 2008
alization solutions to assist
with server consolidation,
bolster greater availability the Oracle database transactions with 8 GB of memory running
and obtain increased served by a bare-metal server two VM servers can handle the
flexibility. IT managers supporting 50 concurrent users. same database workload as the
also are beginning to That means deployment of an dual-CPU machine, plus, an ad-
question if their comput- Oracle database in single VM ditional 65% of transactions.
ing infrastructures take results in just 6% overhead for This result proves that Oracle
advantage of the benefits the 50 concurrent user scenario. VM manages the multiple guest
provided by virtualization Considering that 20%~30% OSes and provides impressive
technology. overhead by virtualization is scalability. This also proves that
considered acceptable in many Oracle VM not only consoli-
Tolly Group tests show
user groups, less than 10% over- dates the servers but also
that Oracle VM server
head is a good indicator of the improves server performance by
virtualization software
efficiency of Oracle VM. hosting multiple OSes in the 32-
efficiently supports a
bit server environment.
variety of workloads and In an LMbench test (an open,
provides scalable per- publicly available free test suite)
Results
formance with multiple to measure low-level processing
virtual guests in the same power by both configurations,
Performance
physical machine. This the virtual machine using Oracle
Efficiency — Physical
means that users can in- VM delivered similar results
vs. Virtual Server
stall Oracle VM not only compared to the bare-metal
to virtualize an Oracle ap- (Swingbench)
server in a process and memory
plication, but also to con- performance test. This proves
solidate other servers run- that Oracle VM efficiently util- Tolly Group engineers measured
ning non-Oracle izes hardware resources. In a the maximum transactions per
applications. two virtual-machine test, engi- minute (tpm) supported by a
neers determined that users bare-metal server, versus the
In a comparison test
would handle 79% more data- transactions served by a single
between a bare-metal
base transactions running two virtual machine and dual virtual
server and a single virtual
VM servers than a single VM machines supporting Oracle
machine in an Enterprise
server. Compared to a bare- VM.
Linux server environment,
metal server with 4 GB of mem-
the single virtual machine Engineers used the Swingbench
ory, a quad core-CPU server
instance handled 94% of benchmark to measure the tpm.
© 2008 The Tolly Group Page 2

Oracle Corporation Oracle VM
Tests show that a single measures bandwidth,
Oracle
virtual machine was able latency and other variables
Corporation
to produce 92.5% of the associated with Unix system
transaction throughput performance. Engineers used
Oracle VM
achieved by a bare-metal LMbench to test and analyze the
server running Oracle performance between the bare-
Performance
Database 11g in a 32-bit metal server and the Oracle VM
Evaluation of
Linux environment with environment.
30 active users. Oracle VM Server
Tests were run to prove that
Virtualization Software
In comparison, by running bandwidth and latencies of each
two instances of Oracle environment were comparable.
VM on a single server, Results show that there is little
tests show combined to no difference when testing the Product Specifications
throughput of 164.9% Level 1, Level 2 and main
compared to the bare- Vendor-supplied information not
memory latencies of the bare- necessarily verified by The Tolly Group
metal server throughput. metal server compared to an Oracle Corporation
With 50 users, the single Oracle virtual environment. (See
Oracle VM
Oracle VM server Figure 3.) Tests were performed
achieved 93.6% of the to evaluate the amount of time Benefits:
transactions delivered by required to perform various Oracle VM is a free, state-of-the-
the bare-metal server. And internal processes within the art server virtualization and
with two instances of bare-metal server and Oracle management solution that makes
enterprise applications easier to
Oracle VM the throughput VM environment. Overall,
deploy, manage, and support and
was 160.9% compared to LMbench tests show that the
is backed worldwide by affordable
the bare-metal server bare-metal server ran slightly
enterprise-quality support for both
throughput. more efficiently than the Oracle Oracle and non-Oracle environ-
virtual environment. ments. Oracle VM facilitates the
This demonstrates that
deployment and operation of your
Oracle VM software can The tests provided by LMbench
enterprise applications on a fully
deliver comparable per- provide users with critical data
certified platform to reduce opera-
formance to a bare-metal needed to assess the efficiency tions and support costs while
server without the expense of VM servers. Users evaluating simultaneously increasing IT
of deploying and support- VM software should strongly efficiency and agility.
ing extra hardware. consider using the benchmark to
Features:
evaluate products on a head-to-
Oracle says that the high Faster application deployment
head basis.
performance offered by with pre-configured VM templates
Scalability — Single
Oracle VM is due, in part,
Leading price/performance —
to running Oracle Enter- VM vs. Dual VMs Low-overhead architecture with
prise Linux in a virtual- no license costs
ized mode. Since Linux is The Tolly Group examined the Includes advanced, Web-based
aware that it is virtualized, performance scalability offered management and live VM
it interacts optimally with by Oracle VM and its effective- migration
the hypervisor, Oracle ness at supporting high-volume Zero license costs
says. This is the officially transactions when the virtual
Linux and Windows Support
recommended and fully machines are doubled from one
supported way of Oracle Official Oracle application certifi-
to two on the same hardware.
VM deployment. cation based on real-world testing
The tests used the throughput of
Affordable, full-stack Enterprise-
a single VM with 30 active users
Performance class support from Oracle
as a baseline (100%).
Efficiency — For more information, contact:
Next, engineers installed two
Physical vs.
virtual machines, and subjected
Virtual (LMbench) Oracle Corporation
both to a load of database trans- 500 Oracle Parkway
actions. With 30 users, the first Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA
Tolly Group engineers
of the two virtual machines Phone: +1-800-ORACLE1
used Bitmover’s
processed 89.1% of the transac- URL: www.oracle.com/virtualization
LMbench, a free suite of
tion load, while the second vir-
software benchmarks that
© 2008 The Tolly Group Page 3

Oracle Corporation Oracle VM
tual machine processed 11.1.0.6.0 ran in parallel on the Seagate 250GB 7200RPM hard
89.3%. same hardware platform. drives configured as RAID 0
array with a striping of 128k.
With 50 users, the first of The server was outfitted with a
the two virtual machines Supermicro X7DBE Mother- Engineers used Swingbench ver-
processed 85% of the board, four SATA 3.0 Gbit/s sion 2.2 to record the number of
transaction load, while the
second virtual machine
processed 85.9%. Memory Latency Comparison of a
Test Setup & Bare-Metal Server vs. Oracle VM
Methodology (Smaller bars are better)
Tolly Group engineers 60
tested Oracle VM 2.1.1
59 58.3
running on a custom 50
server (one dual-core Intel
Nanoseconds
Xeon 5060 3.2-GHz proc-
40
essors, 4-GB DDR2-667
PC-5300 of memory).
30
When testing two VM
servers, Tolly Group engi- 20
neers added a matching
8.8 9.0
dual-core Xeon processor 10
to the server and an addi-
1.3 1.3
tional 4 GB of RAM.
0
Oracle Enterprise Linux Level 1 Level 2 Main
Release 4 Update 6 and cache cache memory
Oracle Database 11g En-
terprise Edition Release Figure 3
Source: The Tolly Group, July 2008
Percentage of Transactions Processed on a Single VM
vs. Two Virtual Machines With Variable Active Users
as Reported by Swingbench 2.2
100%
100% 100%
100%
100%
transactions processed
89.3%
89.1%
80% 85.9%
80%
80% 85%
Percentage of
60%
60%
60%
40%
40%
40%
20%
20%
20%
0%
0%
0%
Virtual Virtual
Virtual Virtual
30 50
machine 1 machine 2
machine 1 machine 2
users users
Virtual virtual
(1 VM)
Single Two virtual machines Two virtual machines
machine (30 users) (50 users)
Note: For both the 30-user scenario and the 50-user scenario there is little variability in the performance delivered
from one virtual machine compared to the second VM. Further, overhead is under 15%.
Figure 4
Source: The Tolly Group, July 2008
© 2008 The Tolly Group Page 4

Oracle Corporation Oracle VM
transactions executed dur- Web site and burned to a boota- pletely configured and “ready to
ing a test, which were ble cd. The installation of the run” version of Oracle Enter-
used to report the transac- database provided a graphical prise Linux Release 4 Update 6
tion per minute rate. user interface to guide the user and a template of the Oracle
through the installation. The in- Database 11g Enterprise Edition
Swingbench is a free load
stallation on the database was Release 11.1.0.6.0. These were
generator (and bench-
done using the default configu- downloaded from the Oracle
marks) designed to stress
ration settings outlined within Web site.
test an Oracle database
the wizard.
(9i,10g,11g). Installation of the Oracle VM
Once Oracle Linux and the Server 2.1.1 was fairly straight
The test also reports the
Oracle 11g database were forward and very similar to the
average response time of
installed, Tolly Group engineers Oracle Linux setup and installa-
the different transaction
then downloaded and installed tion. The installation picked up
types. The test was run
Swingbench version 2.2. Swing- the hardware RAID 0 array
with 30 users and 50
bench provides two types of which had been configured
users to show the impact
tests — a graphical and non- through the onboard RAID
which an increased load
graphical benchmark. The first controller which made the HDD
has on these metrics, and
test produced a graphical repre- setup and configuration much
how well the system can
sentation of the transactions per easier.
scale up on different
minute.
platforms. Oracle VM server runs from its
The transactions included in this own terminal, there is no graphi-
The second test was con-
test are New Customer Registra- cal user interface for configuring
ducted using LMbench
tion, Browse Products, Order or making changes.
version 2.5. LMbench was
Products, Process Orders and
used to record the band- After the server was booted up,
Browse Orders. Tolly Group
width consumption and the Oracle database was the next
engineers ran this test to verify
latency of the Oracle bare- to be installed and configured.
that the database was configured
metal server and Oracle
and working properly.
VM server environments.
Test parameters
The second test, the non-
For the bare-metal server
graphical version of Swing-
test, engineers installed
bench, is known as Charbench. Non-default database
Oracle Enterprise Linux
This is run from a terminal tuning parameters
Release 4 Update 6 onto
window. Compatible: 11.1.0.0.0
the hardware. A software
db_block_size: 8192
RAID 0 array was config- Tolly Group engineers ran three
ured during the Oracle iterations of Charbench with 30 db_cache_size: 2147483648
Linux installation. The users and three iterations of 50 open_cursors: 300
installation was completed users. A separate version of processes: 200
with all the available Charbench was dedicated to shared_pool_size: 167772160
packages through the each of the VM servers tested.
installation CD. Upon The Oracle database schema had Non-default Swingbench
completion, the “up2date” to be nulled and re-populated configuration parameters
command was run to between 30 and 50 users to pre- oewizard.xml:
register with the Oracle vent the database from becom- connectiontype: oci
Linux server, and all ing stale. Results from this test customercount: 25,000
available patches and are compared to the results ordercount: 10,000,000
updates were applied. populated when running the
same scenarios within a virtual swingconfig.xml:
Once the Oracle Linux
environment, first with only one MinDelay=”0”, MaxDelay=”0”
installation and updates
Oracle Virtual Machine running, “New Customer registration”
were completed Tolly
then with two Virtual Machines Weight=”5”
Group engineers installed
running on the same hardware. “Browse Products” Weight=”10”
the Oracle Database 11g
“Order Products” Weight=”50”
Enterprise Edition Release The software used to set up the
“Process Orders” Weight=”50”
11.1.0.6.0. The database virtualized environment
“Browse Orders” Weight=”10”
disk image was down- included the Oracle VM Server,
loaded from the Oracle a template that included a com-
© 2008 The Tolly Group Page 5

Oracle Corporation Oracle VM
Environmental Variables Configured for The Tolly Group is a lead-
Different Machine Types ing global provider of
third-party validation
Machine type CPU cores RAM size Page file
services for
size
vendors of IT
products,
components
32-bit physical 2 4 GB 4 GB
and services.
server
The company is based in
One 32-bit virtual 2 4 GB 4 GB
Boca Raton, FL and can
machine
be reached by phone at
(561) 391-5610, or via
the Internet at:
Two 32-bit virtual 4 (2 for each VM) 8 GB (4 8 GB (4 Web:
machines GB for GB for
each VM) each VM) http://www.tolly.com,
E-mail: sales@tolly.com
Figure 5
Source: The Tolly Group, July 2008
The next step was to load to install and execute. The final iterations of Charbench with 50
onto the VM templates step was to install and run users logged on. The final re-
that were provided by Charbench with the first three sults were compared to the final
Oracle. Through the runs of 30 users, then clear the results of the bare-metal results.
terminal window, the database schema, re-populate
templates were simple the database and run throughput
Test Software Summary
Vendor Product Web URL:
BitMover, Inc. LMbench 3.0 http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench
Public Domain Swingbench 2.2 http://www.dominicgiles.com/swingbench.php
208322-psqifpvt1-cdb-12sep08
© 2008 The Tolly Group Page 6