and quite expectedly, it outperforms [[http://xensource.com|Xen]]. I just finished reading [[http://www.vmware.com/pdf/virtualization_considerations.pdf|another white paper]] last night which bashes Xen. I have more to say on that white paper, but the short story is that I think the paper is //extremely// biased and tries to convince the reader that VMware’s products are the best, but in the process also spreads a reasonable amount of [[wp>Fud|FUD]].

Anyways, coming back to the aforementioned [[http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/resources/711|benchmark]] — what I find most ironic is that VMware has such strict policies on third parties conducting independent benchmarks, and here they are tooting their own horn. I’m sure ESX performs great, but wouldn’t it be more believable if researchers could independently verify this claim? Until sometime back this was near impossible. Though it seems that recently VMware [[http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2006/06/vmware_relaxes.html|relaxed]] its licensing restrictions a little bit, so that internal benchmarks can be made public //once the assumptions, methodology and results have been verified/approved by VMware//.