Introduction

Our Application Packaging Services team wanted to measure the performance of different virtualization products. Below we use SpyStudio to compare ThinApp and Workspace Virtualization performance. Both Symantec and VMware highlight the use of application virtualization to run legacy web applications. There is a huge number of mission critical web applications that only run correctly on Internet Explorer 6 and while companies may be able to afford the cost of migrating applications to modern browsers, they cannot afford even a short application interruption. Virtualization allows companies to continue to run their legacy applications while moving to more modern technology.

The challenges of virtualizing IE6 are not limited to rendering HTML: Java applets, ActiveX, and Flash must also be virtualized. This benchmark compares how long it takes to: launch Internet Explorer 6, launch IE6 and navigate to Nektra’s blog, and open Internet options. We ran each test ten times. SpyStudio can also be used to benchmark specific bottlenecks in plugins and components and to identify compatibility issues.

Benchmark

Launch IE6

Symantec Workspace Virtualization VMWare ThinApp Min 1.5730167 secs 2.217207 secs Max 1.800602 secs 2.5048638 secs Avg 1.681593789 secs 2.360678356 secs Median 1.6773198 secs 2.3479585 secs SD 0.076693291 secs 0.104027481 secs

Launch IE6 and Navigate to http://blog.nektra.com

Symantec Workspace Virtualization VMWare ThinApp Min 7.0385753 secs 9.0458817 secs Max 7.3155127 secs

10.1313509 secs Avg 7.152178211 secs

9.4426123 secs

Median 7.1880917 secs 9.3928642 secs

SD 0.098509252 secs 0.293977928 secs

Open Internet Options

Symantec Workspace Virtualization VMWare ThinApp Min 1.8866595 secs 2.5610158 secs Max 2.215396 secs 2.9904516 secs Avg 2.025388122 secs 2.767548167 secs Median 2.0197439 secs 2.7876525 secs SD 0.101490761 secs 0.152657664 secs



Conclusions

These benchmark results show that Symantec Workspace Virtualization is faster in all three tests.

Symantec Workspace Virtualization was an average of 71 % faster when launching IE6, 75 % faster when launching IE6 and opening Nektra’s blog, and 73 % faster when launching IE6 and opening Internet options.

You can easily benchmark these and other virtualization products yourself with SpyStudio. Download a free trial here.

Related Services

See Also