Posted in Virtualization

Understanding VMware VMmark: A Guide to Benchmarking Virtualized Environments

   23 January 2023

What is VMware VMmark

VMware VMmark is a benchmarking tool that measures the performance of virtualized environments and compares them to industry standards. It uses a set of workloads that emulate real-world applications, such as databases and web servers, to evaluate the performance of virtualized infrastructure, including servers, storage, and networking. The results are reported in a standardized way, allowing for easy comparison of different virtualized environments.

One of the key benefits of VMware VMmark is that it allows organizations to make informed decisions about their virtualized environments. By understanding the performance capabilities of their infrastructure, they can ensure that they are able to meet the demands of their applications and users. Additionally, by comparing the results to industry standards, they can see how their performance stacks up against others in their field.

Another benefit of VMware VMmark is that it provides a consistent and repeatable way to measure performance. This means that organizations can use it to track performance over time and make informed decisions about when to upgrade or scale their infrastructure.

NOTE: It’s important to note that VMware VMmark is not a replacement for testing and validation in a production environment. The benchmarking results are for reference only, and it’s important to validate the performance and capacity of a virtualized environment in a production setting.

Installation – Create a template

In order to utilize VMware VMmark, the first step is to download it from the VMware website, which provides an OVA file that should be saved.

  1. Open the vSphere client and log in to your vCenter Server.
  2. Navigate to the “File” menu and select “Deploy OVF Template.”
  3. Select the OVA file that you wish to install.
    • Select “Local file” and chose the OVF file you downloaded from the VMware website
  1. Name the VM as vmmark-temple-1 (however, you can call it whatever you want)
  2. Select a location to deploy the OVA file. This can be a specific host or cluster, or a resource pool within a host or cluster.
  3. Review details.
  1. Select storage.
  2. Select networks.
  3. Review Ready to complete page and click NEXT
    • The OVA will take a few minutes to deploy.
  4. Enable VMware Tools time synchronization:
    • From the vSphere Client, right-click on the newly-deployed VMmark template and select Edit
      Settings…
    • Select the VM Options tab.
    • Expand VMware Tools.
    • Activate time synchronization
    • Click OK

Make a Copy of the VMmark Template for Infrastructure Operations

Once you’ve deployed the VMmark template (vmmark3-template*), create a copy to be used for
infrastructure operations, naming it with the template name, a hyphen, and 1. For example, if the template is named vmmark3-template-date, you’d name this copy vmmark3-template-date-1.

Create the Prime Client

  1. From the vSphere Client, right-click on the newly-deployed vmmark3-template* virtual machine and
    select Clone > Clone to Virtual Machine…
  2. Under Select a name and folder enter PrimeClient, select the location for the prime client, then click
    Next.
  3. Under Select a compute resource, expand the tree, and select your VMmark client cluster (and, if DRS is not enabled for the client cluster, select an ESXi host), then click Next.
  4. Under Select storage, select your desired datastore to provision the prime client, then click Next.
  5. Under Select clone options, don’t select any options (remove the check from Customize the virtual
    machine’s hardware     if it’s checked), then click Next
  1. Under Ready to complete, select Finish.
  2. Once the cloning process is complete, edit the prime client’s settings as follows:
    • Right-click on the prime client virtual machine and select Edit Settings…
    • On the Virtual Hardware tab, set CPU to 8 and Memory to 16GB
    • Add a second disk:
      Click the ADD NEW DEVICE button (at the top), select Hard Disk, and set the size to 200GB.
    • Add a second NIC:
      Click the ADD NEW DEVICE button (at the top), select Network Adapter, and select your private network.
    • Click OK.

Configure the Prime Client

  1. Right-click on PrimeClient and select Power > Power On.
  2. Right-click on PrimeClient and select Open Remote Console.
  3. Within the console, log in as root; the default root password for the template virtual machine is vmmark.
  1. Configure the network settings for network adapter 1, which will connect to the external network:
    • In a terminal window on the prime client, run the command ifconfig to view the virtual machineʹs network configuration.
    • You will see two network names of the form enoXXXXXXXX, typically eno16780032 and
      eno33559296. The first network name represents network adapter 1, which is connected to the
      external network. The second network name represents network adapter 2, which is connected to the private network.
      If you are configuring the Prime Client to use a DHCP address on the external network, you may see a line “inet XX.XX.XX.XX” in the network adapter 1 block (where XX.XX.XX.XX is a
      DHCP-assigned IP address on your external network). If this IP address is correct, go to Step 5. If not, continue to set up the external IP address manually.
    • Change to the network-scripts directory:
      cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
    • To configure a network named eno16777732 for use with a static IP address:
      cp ~/VMmark3/samples/ifcfg-sample-static ifcfg-eno16777732
    • Open the network script in an editor: vim ifcfg-eno16777732
    • Update the name, the device, the IP address, and other network settings as needed (i.e., IPADDR, NETMASK, and GATEWAY).

For example:

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=192.168.1.100
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
DNS1=8.8.8.8
DNS2=8.8.4.4
  1. Configure the network settings for network adapter 2, which will connect to the private network:
    • Run the command ls /sys/class/net to determine the name of network adapter 2
    • Open the network script in an editor: vim ifcfg-no33559296
    • Run the following command:
      systemctl restart network
  2. Still, in the terminal window, convert this virtual machine into the prime client by running the make-prime script: 
cd ~/VMmark3/tools
sh make-prime.sh

The make-prime script will start an X Windows GUI and display a login dialog.

  1. Log in as root.
    (The default login is test, but click Not listed? and log in as user: root, password: vmmark.)
  2. Configure passwordless SSH on your ESXi hosts to allow the prime client to log into them without a
    password:
    • From the prime client, generate an ECDSA key:
      ssh-keygen -t ecdsa
      For the subsequent three questions (in which file to save the key, passphrase, passphrase again)
      accept the default values by pressing <Enter> at each question.
    • From the prime client, copy id_ecdsa.pub to each ESXi host that will be used in your VMmark
      environment:
      scp /root/.ssh/id_ecdsa.pub ESXihost:/id_ecdsa-client.pub
      (where ESXihost is the name of an ESXi host).
      If you see a warning about the host’s authenticity and a prompt “Are you sure you want to
      continue connecting (yes/no)?”, answer yes.
    • From the prime client, for each ESXi host, add the new key to the authorized-keys list:
      ssh ESXihost “cat /id_ecdsa-client.pub >> /etc/ssh/keys-root/authorized_keys”
    • Still on the prime client, confirm that passwordless SSH works by using SSH to remotely run the
      “hostname” command on each ESXi host:
      ssh ESXihost hostname
      You should see the name of the ESXi host displayed without being prompted for a password. If you are prompted for a password, double-check that all of the commands above were entered correctly.
  3. Make sure the prime client is configured for the correct time zone.
  4. Reboot the prime client.

Conclusion

VMware VMmark is a powerful benchmarking tool that can help organizations measure and compare the performance of their virtualized environments. By providing a consistent and repeatable way to measure performance, it makes it easy to compare virtualized environments and make informed decisions about infrastructure. Installing VMware VMmark requires a few steps such as downloading the OVA file, importing it to vSphere, and configuring the virtual machine settings, however, the process is relatively straightforward. It’s important to keep in mind that benchmarking results are for reference only, and it’s important to validate the performance and capacity of a virtualized environment in a production setting. By using VMware VMmark, organizations can ensure that they are able to meet the demands of their applications and users, and make informed decisions about their virtualized infrastructure.

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