by Hamish Speirs
"Go green with your NetWare servers."
Originally developed to allow NetWare servers to run more efficiently under VMWare, vmBoost also has a benefit for physical servers - Energy Savings.
Many current NetWare servers are running on multiprocessor or multi core CPUs. When the workload on the server needs all of those CPUs, then they're there to work, but what about when there isn't much load on the server? When NetWare is 'idle', it is actually running an idle loop routine - so when idle, the CPU is actually working at 100% utilization, idling. Even with todays more efficient processors, running a CPU at 100% to do nothing is inefficient and expensive.
Typical workloads on NetWare servers are dynamic, so why have a static quantity of CPU resources available? What vmBoost does is make the available CPU resources dynamic. As the workload increases more CPU resources are made available. As the load decreases, the available resources are reduced. Instead of having a CPU running at 100% utilization when it's idling, idle CPU's are shut down completely. When the load on the server increases, the idle CPU is brought back online.
Just as physical servers are inefficient when idling, so are virtualized Netware servers. For example, a virtualized quad CPU NetWare server will drive three physical CPU's to 100% utilization, even when the server is completely idle. For this reason it has always been the rule to only allocate a single virtual CPU to NetWare when virtualizing it. By dynamically bringing CPU's on and offline according to workload, and more effectively idling them when they are online, a virtualized NetWare server can play nicely in a virtual infrastructure.
To download a demo, read more, or purchase, click the following link and go to the Home Menu and look for vmBoost link.
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