As one of the people spending his days supporting vConsolidate, I get first-hand information on how current benchmarks (vConsolidate, VMmark, and the future SPEC benchmark) have work yet to accomplish before they fully characterize the needs associated with virtualization. The most frequent complaint is that customers and engineering teams alike ask for more ways to characterize and benchmark their specific environments.

vConsolidate was designed and continues to fulfill the basic needs of virtualization benchmarking. It supports multiple VM vendors, multiple hardware platforms, and multiple ‘profiles’ of test configurations that accommodate different usage models. But, it doesn’t support all usage models… just as no other single benchmark currently does. There is more work to be done.

For some example reports with vConsolidate benchmark detail and results, check out the Virtualization Benchmarks section on this site:
http://www.principledtechnologies.com/

For general happenings about virtualization and just about anything server related, check out our ‘The Server Room’ community:
http://www.intel.com/server
Or for a lighter version of similar content:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Server-Room/8814274474