FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

vBenchmark
version 1.0

Q. What is vBenchmark? Once the virtual appliance has been deployed and powered-
on, you will be able to access vBenchmark from a variety of
A. vBenchmark is a tool to measure the performance of a
web browsers by entering the IP address of the application:
VMware virtualized infrastructure across three categories
 Compatible browsers: Firefox 9+ (Windows), Firefox 5+
 Efficient resource utilization (Linux), Chrome 12+ (Windows & Linux), Safari 5+ (Mac),
 Operational Agility Internet Explorer 9+ with Compatibility View disabled (Windows)
 Quality of Service
Q. I would like to contribute to the community repository
Q. Why should I use vBenchmark? and retrieve Peer Group metrics, but I am concerned
about sharing sensitive information like IP addresses
A. vBenchmark directly queries existing vCenter Server data to and host names. Does vBenchmark hide this data
provide a succinct set of metrics to help you measure and before sending?
communicate configuration, activity and availability of your
VMware virtualized private cloud. In addition, contribute A. Yes. You can see how this works by going to the Share
your metrics to a community repository and in return, tab, and in the lower left corner, clicking on button to
receive Peer Group benchmarks to see how your results “Preview all data to be sent.” This document is similar to
compare. the one generated through Options, “Export application data
tables,” with the exception that entity names, IP addresses,
 Retrieve metrics across one or multiple vCenter Servers and hostnames are obfuscated. Identities for vCenter
 Include or exclude hosts at the Cluster level to further Server Groups, vCenter Servers, and Clusters are replaced
refine your analysis with a simple count of each unique entity.
 Save queries and compare over time to measure
changes as your environment evolves Q. Why are vCenter Server license keys collected when I
share my data and how are they used?
 Define your Peer Group by geographic region, industry
and company size, then see how you stack up A. vCenter Server license keys are collected purely to enable
automated processing of data sent to VMware into the
 And, did we mention this tool is free?
correct Peer Groups. License keys are not shared with
Q. What’s involved in deployment of this tool and how do anyone other than VMware, and will not be used for
I access vBenchmark once deployed? license compliance auditing.

A. vBenchmark is web application packaged as a virtual Q. When I preview data to be sent, I see additional data in
appliance. Please visit us at VMware Labs, the Infrastructure Configuration section, why don’t I
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vBenchmark, to download this see this presented in the application and how is it
tool. Choose the appropriate file type for your deployment used?
platform:
A. When you generate an export of application data tables,
 OVF (descriptor file + VMDK) can be deployed directly to either thru export function in Options, or by previewing
vCenter Server 4.x, 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.x via web data to be sent in the Share tab, you will see fields such
interface as Total Physical CPUs, Total Licenses, Total Licenses
 OVA and OVF (descriptor file + VMDK) can be deployed Used and Count of Running VMs. Some of these
on vSphere 4.x, 5.0 using the vSphere Client datapoints are collected to be used in calculations for
other metrics that are presented by the application.
 ZIP file contains VMX file which can be launched with
VMware Server, Workstation, Fusion and Player However, from time to time, we may collect datapoints not
presented by the application to help us determine
availability of future metrics to be included. Please note
that no data collected and shared with VMware through
this application will be used to audit license compliance.

FAQ
VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at
http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their
respective companies.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

vBenchmark
version 1.0

Q. Where is my data stored? vSphere features High Availability (HA) and Fault
Tolerance (FT). The following failover events are
A. All data is initially stored in a VMware server, and then
captured:
processed by VMware’s business intelligence systems.
 HA: Cluster failover
Q. Is my data secure?  HA: VM failover
A. Yes  FT: VM failover
 All data is fully encrypted using Secure Socket Layer
(SSL) during transmission.
 Metrics from individual companies are never be shared
as Peer Group metrics are aggregated averages for all Q. How is Time to Complete Disaster Recovery Failovers
companies across Peer Groups defined by geography, calculated?
industry and company size A. This metric measures the average of Disaster Recovery
plan tests and actual failovers.
Q. I have more clusters and hosts than vBenchmark
captures, why does vBenchmark sometimes not
retrieve data for full vCenter Server inventory?
A. Please check the credentials used with vCenter Server
administrator. Not all credentials have access to ALL
objects within vCenter Server. Even credentials with
administrator privileges do not necessarily have access to
the full inventory.

Q. How is Time to Provision a VM calculated?

A. This metric represents the sum of the averages of 4 tasks
related to provisioning a VM:

 Configuring a host
 Adding a host to vCenter Server
 Cloning VM
 Powering-on VM

Q. How is Time to Reconfigure a Host or VM calculated?

A. This metric represents the average across 4 different
reconfiguration tasks for the following elements:

 VM
 Host
 Network
 Storage

Q. How is Time to Failover with High Availability or Fault

Tolerance calculated?
A. Unplanned downtime is reduced with implementation of

FAQ
VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at
http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their
respective companies.