Measuring Inter-VM Performance Interference in IaaS Cloud

Abstract

Virtualization has enabled cloud computing to deliver computing capabilities using limited computer hardware. Server virtualization provides capabilities to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) independently in a shared host leading to efficient utilization of server resources. Unfortunately, VMs experience interference from each other as a result of sharing common hardware. The performance interference arises from VMs having to compete for the hypervisor capacity and as a result of resource contention, which happens when resource demands exceed the allocated resources. From this viewpoint, any VM allocation policy needs to take into account VM performance interference before VM placement. Therefore, understanding how to measure performance interference is crucial. In this paper, we propose a simple experimental approach that can be used to measure performance interference in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud during VM consolidation.