Performance Benchmarking Guidelines for VMware Workstation 5.5

VMWARE WHITE PAPER
VMware Workstation 5.5
Performance Benchmarking
Guidelines for VMware
Workstation 5.5
Introduction
This white paper provides guidance in implementing benchmark tests using VMware
Workstation 5.5.
The paper discusses:
• Performance benchmarking methodology.
• Configuring the systems under test to produce the best performance possible. This
includes the host system, the VMware software, and the guest system.
• Ensuring that the tests are making “apples-to-apples” comparisons.
The paper also includes examples of common pitfalls that can affect the accuracy or relevance
of the results obtained by benchmarking tests.
The guidelines in this paper are intended to assist in the acquisition of meaningful, accurate, and
repeatable benchmarking results. These guidelines are useful when you perform comparisons
between VMware Workstation and either native systems or other virtualization products, as well
as when you run benchmarks in virtual machines in general. The guidelines should not,
however, be considered VMware best practices in all cases. Among other reasons, this is because
benchmarking sometimes involves saturating one resource while overprovisioning others,
something that would not be desirable in a production environment.
Note: Though this paper specifically addresses VMware Workstation 5.5, most of the guidelines
recommended here also apply to VMware Player 1.0.
Highest-Performance Configurations
There are some areas in which the ...