Project VRC Phase II:
Latest generation virtualization techniques doubles capacity terminal servers
With that statement Ruben and Jeroen have just released Phase II of Project Virtual Reality Check (VRC) to create this whitepaper they have done more than 150 tests with Login VSI to measure the performance of servers while being stressed by a great amount of simulated users. This whitepaper has a few advantages to whitepapers published by the vendors themselves and whitepapers published by blogs that are only testing one hypervisor:
- The whitepaper is truly independent
- The whitepaper is approved by the different vendors
- Everybody can repeat the tests with the free available Login VSI
- The authors aren’t biased
- You can compare the results easily (the servers have been stressed the same way)
One of the most interesting conclusions of Phase II: The performance increase measured is not caused by improvements to the hypervisor but mainly by Intel’s innovations in the Nehalem architecture VRC states that it can be almost solely accredited for the performance improvements seen with TS workloads.
Get your free copy of the whitepaper at www.projectvrc.com
VSI 2.0 Released
Mark just gave me the heads up that he and Jeroen released VSI 2.0!!
I would like to congratulate Mark and Jeroen on this awesome achievement! You guys can be proud of yourselves!!!
The beta 3 was very well received, just a couple minor fixes were required, and we updated the documentation. In comparison to VSI 1.0 we made tremendous improvements in the overall quality and reliability of VSI.
Feel free to mention this on your website (if you think this is interesting of course). We do not have an official press release, but for your convenience we made a summary you can use:
Login Consultants releases the brand new and free VSI 2.0, a specifically designed benchmark for SBC and VDI environments. VSI loads the system with simulated user workload, and focuses on how much users can run on the system before it saturates. VSI is 100% platform and protocol independent, and VSI configuration is simplified and automated where possible. As a result, VSI is a turn-key benchmark solution: perform tests within days instead of weeks. No need to create the workloads first. VSI is intended to be used by VDI/SBC engineers/admins, a degree in testing methodologies is not required.
VSI 2.0 introduces new workloads, and an improved indexing method: VSImax. Overall, VSI 2.0 will be a much smoother experience in comparison to VSI 1.0, many best practices and lessons learned from project VRC are now included in this release. The free version is called “VSI 2.0 Express”, the advanced version is “VSI 2.0 PRO”.
The most important 2.0 features are:
- Completely new, more realistic, medium workload
- Support for IE8, Office 2010, Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2
- Highly improved robustness (even under extreme loads)
- Improved response timer mechanism and index: VSImax
- Over 100 fixes and usability improvements
- Multilanguage Support (PRO only)
- Other workloads such as: light, heavy and multimedia (PRO only)
- External clock calibration and response time measurement (PRO only)
- Customization Support (PRO only)
VSI can be downloaded from Login Consultants download section: http://www.loginconsultants.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=20&Itemid=149 .”
Login VSI 2.0 Beta 3
Being one of the developers of Login VSI of course i have to want to post something about it, but since we at IThastobeCool want to give you something special i decided to create a video of what Login VSI really does.
The video shows you the “Medium” user workload of Login VSI Express (read: Free) in this session we measure user experience by timing window events. You can imagine running this test with one user does not tell you the performance of the server but look what happens when you add 287!
“Login VSI 2.0 is the second iteration of Login VSI 1.0: the free and specifically designed benchmark for SBC and VDI environments. VSI 2.0 introduces completely new workloads, and a improved and more accurate index called VSImax. Overall, VSI 2.0 will be a much smoother experience, many best practices and lessons learned from project VRC are now included in this release. The free version will now be called “Login VSI 2.0 Express”, the advanced version is called “Login VSI 2.0 PRO”. The most important new 2.0 features are:
Workload(s) re-build from scratch
· New, more realistic, medium workload (now 10 instead of 18 minutes)
· Real-world end-user websites (with rich flash content)
· Windows 7 and Windows 2008 r2 support
· IE 8 support
· New Zip and PDF printer (BullZip)
· Highly improved robustness (even under extreme loads)
· Improved response timer mechanism and index: VSImax
VSI 2.0 PRO features
· Multilanguage Support (Express only support English OS and Office)
· Detailed logging
· Runtime calibration of timed events and response time measurement using an external SQL server clock (important for hypervisor comparisons)
· Office 2003 and Office 2010 support
· Customization Support (ad your own apps to the VSI workload)
Analyzer Changes
· New VSImax calculation: much more precise
· Automatic renaming of excel files to “testname.xltm”
· Remember settings from last session
AD Setup Changes
· Split system / user policy objects / added Computers OU
· Improved setup user objects (no password expiry etc)
Launcher
· New pre-launch naming of test: no more archiving of tests needed
This beta can be downloaded from Login Consultants
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