Whether a custom Java application or third-party vendor application, all virtualize relatively easily. Often our customers notice improvements in performance and scalability when moving to a virtualized platform. Java application clusters are known to contain many instances that require increased managment when on a physical infrastructure. Many of our customers look for consolidation opportunities while improving performance and scalability. The prime reason for virtualizing Java applications these days is the ability to reduce the JVM instance sprawl that many administrators dread—and have to consolidate through virtualization in order to keep the scale manageable and feasible. Many of our customers have virtualized IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic, JBoss, and Tomcat. In the last three years, virtualization of Java applications has become mainstream, as seen with many of our customer accounts.
The results of the tests discussed in this paper show that enterprise-level Java applications can provide excellent performance when deployed on VMware vSphere 4.1. The application used in these tests was Olio, a multi-tier enterprise application that implements a complete social networking Web site. Olio was deployed on SpringSource tc Server, running both natively and virtualized on vSphere 4.1. Figure 5 shows the peak throughput for a single instance of Olio running on tc Server, both natively and in a VM, with two and four CPUs.
Customer Case in Point
“With our OrderExpress project we upgraded our WebSphere Commerce, Portal, WCM, Service Layer, DB2 Database; migrated from AIX to Linux; virtualized on VMware; moved the application into a three-tier DMZ; increased our transactions by over 150 percent; and added significant new capabilities that greatly improved the customer experience. Changing such a wide range of technology components at once was a huge challenge. However using VMware vSphere and additional architectural changes we were successful in improving performance by over 300 percent; lowered costs in the millions; improved security, availability, and scalability; and how we plan to continue evolving this application to maintain greater than 30 percent yearly growth.” – Jeff Battisti, Senior Enterprise Architect at Cardinal Health
Learn more: Virtualizing Business Critical Applications Whitepaper [39-page PDF]
