The Thrilla in California

If you haven’t seen, differences of opinion between VMware and Citrix with regards to hypervisor performance and how it should be measured have passed the boiling point. Today’s highlights included the following posts: Hypervisor Test Fallout Continues (Keith Ward, Editor - Virtualization Review Magazine) ESX Benchmarking - Only for vGods (Simon Crosby, CTO - Citrix) These posts came in response to the post from VMware’s Eric Horschman - “A Big Step Backwards for Virtualization Benchmarking.” Clearly, performance is something both vendors and customers are taking seriously. To that end, we invited both VMware and Citrix to discuss their differences together in a public forum, and both have accepted our invitation. Mark July 29th on your calendar for the Thrilla in California. At our July Catalyst Conference in San Diego, VMware’s Scott Drummonds will debate Citrix’s Simon Crosby on the topic of hypervisor performance. The debate will last 25 minutes, followed by a 10 minute Q&A from the audience. Both Simon and Scott know hypervisors and performance issues inside-and-out, and neither require any introduction. To help fill seats, Don King has agreed to assist in promoting the fight. Here’s the first promotional picture, taken from outside the conference venue. If seeing two passionate virtualization experts go head-to-head on performance isn’t reason enough, here are the names of a few more speakers already confirmed for the conference: Paul Maritz (VMware CEO), Mark Templeton (Citrix CEO), and Mark Russinovich (Technical Fellow at Microsoft). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re putting together a great lineup of speakers and sessions, and I’ll be able to post a full list of sessions and abstracts shortly. Early bird pricing is still available, so it’s a good time to secure your seat for the Thrilla in California. I’ll be moderating the debate and have a few months to prepare questions. If there is something you would like me to ask Scott or Simon during the debate, please feel free to post it as a comment, or send it to me privately using my contact form. I want to thank Simon and Scott for agreeing to the debate. I think it’s important to discuss these differences publicly, while working to find a consensus on how best to gauge hypervisor performance in the absence of a working industry standard. Also, while I’m giving thanks, I’d also like to thank Adobe Photoshop for its help with my promotional photo http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=313