The Sun Blade Blog
VMworld 2007 - report from the trenches
Tradeshow booths are great venues for obtaining real-time feedback on products. From a product roadmap perspective, the feedback can be excellent input and guidance for future product updates and enhancements.
At VMworld 2007 we displayed a Sun Blade 8000 Modular System, Sun Blade 6000 Modular System and a Sun Fire X4600 rackmount server.
VMworld (as you might expect) draws a rather technical audience that is very focused on (amongst other things) achieving efficient server consolidation compression ratios via. virtualization technologies. Taking advantage of the opportunity to talk with literally hundreds (if not thousands) of customers coming by our booth, I was afforded the opportunity to perform a real-time, impromptu "server compression ratio" survey.
I thought you might be interested in hearing the results.
As you might guess ... the numbers were all over the map. The strangest response was from one gentleman that stated he had a few VMware instances running 1 guest VM per physical server (yes ... that's what he said). After all, since it was the night of the "open-bar reception" I actually asked him to repeat the answer (twice)! He kind of chuckled (and shook his head) as he answered my repetitive question by saying "don't even get me started". Somehow, I don't quite think it was his decision.
Anyhow, I'll summarize my survey results by saying that the majority of folks indicated that they typically run 6 - 8 guest VMs per core. Of course this is a very broad (high level) generalization as issues such as workload characteristics, server configuration (memory, I/O, core count etc.), guest operating system requirements, storage subsystems etc. all contribute to the fact that "your mileage will vary". There were several folks that indicated numbers as high as 20 - 25 guest VMs per core and beyond! I'm sure some of you out there are even more aggressive than this, but for the most part (conservatively speaking) the ballpark estimates were 6 - 8 guest VMs per core (in production environments).
In addition to the aforementioned products on display, we also provided visitors to the booth a preview look at one of our upcoming Server Modules (blades). The new Server Module (known as X8440) will utilize (4) AMD Opteron quad-core processors and support 128GB memory. Oh yea, for this new generation of Server Module, we upgraded its I/O subsystem to support a total of (6) x8 PCIe links (192Gbps I/O throughput). Also, the X8440 was designed to support AMD's Dual Dynamic Power Management technology (aka split plane) for enhanced performance. Good server design methodologies dictate that you should upgrade all of the applicable server subsystems in concert in order to maintain a balanced system and avoid dreaded bottleneck(s). The X8440 was designed from the ground up to leverage the performance enhancements found in AMD's quad-core processors.
Enough of the Marketing stuff ... so where does this leave us.
As I was talking to folks about their "server compression" ratios (most of them staring in amazement at the 32 DIMM slots inside of the X8440 Server Module) I could see the "lightbulb going on".
The conversations quickly transitioned away from "well, I typically run (x) number of guest VMs" to something more along the lines of "you're kidding me ... 16 cores, 128GB memory, 6 (x8) PCIe links ... let me see, that's roughly 128 guest VMs (conservatively) per blade ... 1280 guest VMs per chassis... are you sure this is a blade? (again) You've got to be kidding me! Do you know how much power & cooling savings that adds up to? - Wow, blades sure have come a long way in just a few years ...my boss would never think of using blades in a virtualization scenario, these Sun Blade servers have definitely changed the playing field - can you scan my badge ... I need more information on your blades".
There was this one customer that I had chatted with on day 1 that came by the booth again on day 2. On his 2nd trip to the booth he brought some of his peers with him. It was really cool to hear him say "here it is ... this is what I was talking about" ... I just stood back and listened as he gave a demo to his peers. It was great (I had trained him well)!
As mentioned, mileage will vary, but I just wanted to share with you some of the feedback that I heard last week at the show. It was a pleasure displaying our blade server products to the virtualized world.
Did you have a chance to stop by the Sun Booth? Any additional feedback?
What did you think of the show?
What do you think of VMware's ESX 3i (embedded hypervisor) announcement? Are you going to deploy ESX 3i in production environments? Why or why not?
Looks like I'm using this blog to solicit feedback. Who would've ever thought?
By the way, the Sun Blade X8440 Server Module mentioned above is shipping today with dual core Opteron processors. We are planning to ship the quad core version later this calendar year. For additional information on Sun Blade Servers please refer to sun.com/blades
Comments are encouraged!
Posted at 01:06PM Sep 21, 2007 by Marc Shelley in Sun | Comments[0]
