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VMware Claims Performance Records

CANNES, France -- Today at VMworld Europe 2009, VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, announced a series of performance records on VMwares currently available ESX 3.5 and an internal version expected to be released later this year. These recently released throughput and efficiency demonstrations illustrate how VMware infrastructure can support workloads with throughputs that greatly exceed even the most demanding customer needs.

In today’s keynote session, VMware Chief Technology Officer Dr. Stephen Herrod unveiled a new high water mark in virtualized database performance. Running a resource-intensive OLTP benchmark, based on a fair-use implementation of the TPC-C* workload specification, VMware achieved 85 percent of native performance when running Oracle DB on VMware ESX. This workload, which demonstrated 8,900 database transactions per second and 60,000 disk input/outputs per second (IOPS), is the most resource-intensive load ever shown in a virtual environment to date.

To put these numbers in perspective, according to a VMware Capacity Planner study of 15,000 Oracle databases, the average Oracle database executes approximated 100 transactions per second and generates roughly 1,200 storage operations per second. This single virtual machine instance that was discussed today served 89 times more transactions than the same deployment, and was capable of performing work that required 50 times more storage throughput than the average four-processor Oracle database. With this demonstration, all but a very small segment of database deployments become attractive targets for VMware virtualization.

“In the past, there was a perception that demanding databases such as Oracle were not suitable candidates for virtualization,” said Dr. Herrod. “These record-setting throughputs at near-native performance prove that VMware’s maximum capabilities exceed the server needs of most customers. This makes virtualizing database environments a viable solution for those looking to reduce IT costs by consolidating servers and increasing business continuity.”

VMware Inc.