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SPEC VIRT ®

The SPEC virt_sc ® 2013 benchmark suites are used to measure performance of virtualized platforms. This is the newest version of the SPEC VIRT® benchmarks which are targeted for use by hardware vendors, virtualization software vendors, application software vendors, datacenter managers, and academic researchers. The benchmark addresses performance evaluation of datacenter servers used in virtualized server consolidation (sc).

The SPECvirt_sc 2013 benchmark price is $3000 for new customers and $750 for qualified non profit organizations and accredited academic institutions. To find out if your organization has an existing license for a SPEC product please contact SPEC at [email protected].

The SPECvirt® Datacenter 2021 benchmark is the next generation of virtualization benchmarking for measuring performance of a scaled-out datacenter. It is intended to be complementary to the SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark rather than a replacement.

Patch updates:

A patch for the SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark v1.1 was released on April 28, 2023. Patch P1a replaces Patch P1. It addresses an issue encountered when applying Patch P1, which used the Linux utility xdelta, and is no longer compatible with newer versions of the utility. Any submissions using TLSv1, TLSv1.1, or TLSv1.2 encryptions for the webserver workload must use this patch.
A patch for the SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark v1.1 was released on March 10, 2019. Patch P2 addresses an issue encountered when running the webserver workload with PHP versions 5.5 and newer which would prevent the workload from properly running and generating a valid result. Any submissions using PHP 5.5 or newer for the webserver workload may use this patch.
A patch for the SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark v1.1 was released on March 20, 2017. Patch P1 addresses an issue encountered when running the webserver workload with TLS encryptions which would cause any result to be marked as invalid. Any submissions using TLSv1, TLSv1.1, or TLSv1.2 encryptions for the webserver workload must use this patch.

The SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark measures the end-to-end performance of all system components including the hardware, virtualization platform, and the virtualized guest operating system and application software. The benchmark supports hardware virtualization, operating system virtualization, and hardware.

The benchmark utilizes several SPEC workloads representing applications that are common targets of virtualization and server consolidation. We modified each of these standard workloads to match a typical server consolidation scenario of CPU resource requirements, memory, disk I/O, and network utilization for each workload. These workloads are modified versions of the SPECweb® 2005 benchmark, the SPECjAppServer® 2004 benchmark, the SPECmail® 2008 benchmark, and the SPECint® 2006 benchmark.. The client-side SPEC virt_sc benchmark harness controls the workloads. Scaling is achieved by running additional sets of virtual machines, called "tiles", until overall throughput reaches a peak. All VMs must continue to meet required quality of service (QoS) criteria.

The benchmark also includes options for measuring power consumption and power/performance relationships. Based on SPEC Power® methodology, power measurement requires the use one of the accepted power analyzers. The benchmarker has the option of running with power monitoring enabled and can submit results to any of three categories:

Performance only (the SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark metric)
Performance/power for the System Under Test including storage (the SPEC virt_sc 2013_PPW benchmark metric)
Performance/power for the Server-only (the SPEC virt_sc 2013_ServerPPW benchmark metric)

Benchmark V1.1 available:
This update:

Incorporates all errata fixes since the initial release
Adds support for newer web security protocols (TLS) and ciphers
Updates the SPEC PTDaemon tool ™ to its latest release

Result submissions were accepted with the V1.0 or V1.1 version of the benchmark until December 21, 2016 (three months after release). Comparisons are allowed between V1.0 and V1.1 of the benchmark. After December 21, 2016, all result submissions must be made with the V1.1 version of the benchmark. Licensees of the previous version of the benchmark suite may contact the SPEC office to request a free update to V1.1.

Results

Submitted Results: Includes all of the results submitted to SPEC from the SPEC member companies and other licensees of the benchmark.

Search the SPEC virt_sc 2013 benchmark results in SPEC's online result database.

Information

Press Releases
Press release material, documents, and announcements:

Benchmark Documentation

Benchmark Technical Support

Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

SPEC VIRT ®

Results

Information