Performance By Design

The VMware Technical Journal recently published a paper entitled “ Memory Overcommitment in the ESX Server .” It traverses similar ground to my recent blog entries on the subject of VMware memory management, and similarly illustrates the large potential impact paging can have on the performance of applications running under virtualization. Using synthetic benchmarks, the VMware study replicates the major findings from the VMware benchmark data that I recently reported on beginning here .  VMware being willing to air performance results publicly that are less than benign is a very positive sign. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for VMware customers to configure machines where memory is overcommitted, subject to severe performance problems. VMware customers require frank guidance from their vendor to help them recognize when this happens and understand what steps to try to minimize these problems arising in the future. The publication of this article in the VMTJ is a solid, first step i