Release: VMware VMmark 2.5

VMware has released version 2.5 of its benchmarking framework VMmark. VMmark focuses on measuring the performance of the whole data center, including complex operations like manual and automated (or DRS-initated) vMotion, Storage vMotion, as well as virtual machines cloning and deployment.

Published VMmark results from vendors can be found on the VMware Benchmark Results page, which currently contains 35 entries. Beginning on January 8th 2013, any submission of benchmark results must use the VMmark 2.5 benchmark kit.

Version 2.5 provides the following new functionality:

  • Support for the VMware vCenter Server Appliance.
  • Support for VMmark 2.5 message and results delivery via Growl/Prowl.
  • Support for PowerCLI 5.1.
  • Updated workload virtual machine templates made from SLES for VMware, a free use version of SLES 11 SP2.
  • Improved pre-run initialization checking.

All of the changes can be found in the release notes.