How do I interpret a VMmark score?

A VMmark score is a measure of the performance of both the hardware and virtualization layers of a virtualization platform. Each score represents the performance relative to a fixed reference platform. Though the reference platform is from a previous hardware generation, making comparisons between it and newer systems not very meaningful, its use allows for easy comparisons between various contemporary platforms and configurations. A score is obtained by measuring the aggregate throughput achieved by multiple workloads executing simultaneously on the virtualization platform. A set of six specific workloads, each in its own virtual machine, are run for a specific length of time. These six workload virtual machines are collectively defined as a VMmark tile. During a VMmark run each individual workload generates a raw throughput metric -- for example, the throughput of the database workload is measured in transactions per minute. Upon completion of a run each of these raw metrics is ...  more