IOmark and Evaluator Group announce certified IOmark-VM-HC benchmark results for Intel servers and NVMe storage together using VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) achieved 480 IOmark-VM-HC instances, at a record price per IOmark-VM-HC virtual machine of $545.27.

Evaluator Group tested servers with different storage media including NVMe flash storage, solid-state devices, and hard disk drives. The test results confirmed that all-flash configurations provided higher price-performance than did the hybrid configurations using spinning hard disk media. Furthermore, newer NVMe storage media outpaced all-flash configurations in terms of performance, price-performance and price per GB of capacity.

"NVMe storage delivered 3 times better performance and nearly 3 times better price-performance than the previous leading results," said Russ Fellows, Senior Partner of Evaluator Group. "For enterprise applications, the combination of Intel NVMe storage with VMware VSAN software delivers industry leading performance and price-performance for hyperconverged solutions running enterprise applications."

"These IOmark results prove that software defined storage such as VMware VSAN together with Intel NVMe storage deliver industry leading hyperconverged price - performance," said Camberley Bates, Managing Partner of Evaluator Group. "These benchmarks show the economic benefits that NVMe Flash provide to enterprise applications."

IOmark-VM-HC is a benchmark that certifies hyperconverged systems for virtual server workloads. The benchmark measures server application workloads, requiring the response times meet specific performance levels. IOmark-VM-HC measures and reports application specific storage workloads and the price per VM instance.

The IOmark benchmark results are audited to ensure uniform testing and reporting of results, enabling IT users the ability to compare products using metrics that matter: price, capacity and application performance. The application mix for IOmark-VM, the virtual machine application server benchmark includes databases, webservers and Exchange mail servers plus hypervisor operations consisting of a VM clone, deploy, boot, software upgrade, and storage migration between storage volumes.

The IOmark-VM benchmark requires the following to achieve passing results:

• Total test time is 1 hour, with a measured interval of 30 minutes
• Seventy percent of response times for I/O's must not exceed 20ms
• A minimum number of VMware vSphere Storage vMotion and VM clone operations must also be completed during a 1 hour test

Evaluator Group is the developer of IOmark, which is available without charge to Evaluator Group IT end user premium subscribers. Vendors, performance testing labs and channel partners may purchase to use the tool in their lab and for publishing audited results. IT end users may purchase a discounted license. An evaluation license may be obtained for 30 days for internal trials.

The Intel IOmark-VM-HC results are available at the IOmark website, along with the IOmark concepts and other information on IOmark-VM-HC available at http://www.iomark.org