Ranking of computing equipment configurations for satisfying requirements of virtualized computing environments based on an overall performance efficiency

An apparatus comprising:

• a data storage unit configured to store virtualization computing performance test data for a plurality of physical servers, wherein the test data comprises real test results obtained from observing physical server performance in each of a plurality of virtualization computing performance categories for each of a plurality of virtualization computing equipment configurations;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• receive data describing a set of requirements for virtualization computing services for a computing hardware platform to be built;
• identify virtualization computing equipment configurations among the plurality of virtualization computing equipment configurations from a plurality of hardware platforms that are capable of satisfying the set of requirements based on the received data, wherein the received data indicates a total number of virtual machine processes required corresponding to a number of instances of virtual desktop users or virtual servers, an amount of memory to be allocated for each instance, and a percentage of expected memory over-commitment, wherein memory over-commitment represents an amount of memory beyond what is physically provided by one or more physical servers for each instance;
• compute for each identified virtualization computing equipment configuration, a measure of efficiency in each of the plurality of performance categories based on the set of requirements and the virtualization computing performance test data, wherein the measure of efficiency for a given performance category is based on one or more high threshold levels, one or more low threshold levels, or one or more high threshold and low threshold levels, with each threshold level corresponding to a particular score;
• weight each measure of efficiency for a corresponding performance category;
• generate an overall performance efficiency for each virtualization computing equipment configuration based upon a combination of weighted measures of efficiency;
• and
• rank each identified virtualization computing equipment configuration based on the overall performance efficiency to indicate how a particular virtualization computing equipment configuration for a particular hardware platform compares to other virtualization computing equipment configurations for other hardware platforms, across the plurality of performance categories.

One or more non-transitory computer readable storage media encoded with software comprising computer executable instructions and when the software is executed operable to:

• receive data describing a set of requirements for virtualization computing services for a computing hardware platform to be built, wherein the received data indicates a total number of virtual machine processes required corresponding to a number of instances of virtual desktop users or virtual servers, an amount of memory to be allocated for each instance, and a percentage of expected memory over-commitment, wherein memory over-commitment represents an amount of memory beyond what is physically provided by one or more physical servers for each instance;
• identify virtualization computing equipment configurations among a plurality of virtualization computing equipment configurations from a plurality of hardware platforms that are capable of satisfying the set of requirements based upon the received data;
• determine for each identified virtualization computing equipment configuration, a measure of efficiency for each of a plurality of performance categories based on the set of requirements and virtualization computing performance test data for a plurality of physical servers, wherein the test data comprises real test results obtained from observing physical server performance in each of a plurality of virtualization computing performance categories for each of a plurality of virtualization computing equipment configurations, wherein the measure of efficiency for a given performance category is based on one or more high threshold levels, one or more low threshold levels, or one or more high threshold and low threshold levels, with each threshold level corresponding to a particular score;
• weight each measure of efficiency for a corresponding performance category;
• generate an overall performance efficiency for each virtualization computing equipment configuration based upon a combination of weighted measures of efficiency;
• and
• rank each identified virtualization computing equipment configuration based on the overall performance efficiency to indicate how a particular virtualization computing equipment configuration for a particular hardware platform compares to other virtualization computing equipment configurations for other hardware platforms, across the plurality of performance categories.