Table of Contents. Virtual Server Software Trade Study Architecture Working Group, Systems Administrators Group , Revised

Criteria Weights and Product Scores

weights Score (1-5) Weighted Score (1-5) Weigthed Criteria VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX linux KVM linux KVM linux KVM linux KVM linux KVM Generic Security 7 3 2 3 4 84 4 4 4 4 112 Cost 5 2 3 1 3 45 4 5 5 5 95 Hardware requirements 5 2 3 4 3 60 4 5 4 4 85 Total 189 292 Normalized 55.59 85.88 Support Services Documentation 8 4 4 4 4 128 3 1 4 3 88 Training opportunities 3 4 4 5 4 51 1 1 3 2 21 Technical support 4 4 4 4 5 68 3 2 3 3 44 Total 247 153 Normalized 82.33 51 Features Guest OS support 7 2 4 5 4 105 5 5 5 4 133 Live migration 7 4 5 3 4 112 4 4 5 4 119 Cluster of hosts 3 4 5 4 4 51 3 3 3 4 39 Shared storage 9 4 3 4 4 135 3 3 4 4 126

Automatic disaster recovery 9 4 3 4 4 135 3 3 3 3 108

Performance VMware performance is good but supposedly suffers under heavy IO loads.  Linux KVM has exhibited  near native performance in all of our testing.  Utilizing the bonnie++ benchmark for disk IO VMware  and linux KVM guests were comparable for sequential character and block IO, but linux KVM was far  ahead in the creation and deletion tests.  Linux KVM includes support for para virtual and pass through  drivers for increasing network and disk IO performance.  Recent development versions of linux KVM  tout native gigabit ethernet performance. Bonnie++  benchmark output (++++ means < 500ms): Version 1.03b

Values redacted due to VMware license.

Sequential & Random Output / Input, Chr, Block, Rewrite, Seek VMware, KVM similar.

Sequential Create, Random Create / Delete