Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Scalability Comparison of Four Host Virtualization Tools

  • Published:
Journal of Grid Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Virtualization tools are becoming popular in the context of Grid Computing because they allow running multiple operating systems on a single host and provide a confined execution environment. In several Grid projects, virtualization tools are envisioned to run many virtual machines per host. This immediately raises the issue of virtualization scalability.

In this paper, we compare the scalability merits of Four virtualization tools. First, from a simple experiment, we motivate the need for simple microbenchmarks. Second, we present a set of metrics and related methodologies. We propose four microbenchmarks to measure the different scalability parameters for the different machine resources (CPU, memory disk and network) on three scalability metrics (overhead, linearity and isolation). Third, we compare four virtual machine technologies (Vserver, Xen, UML and VMware).

The results of this study demonstrate that all the compared tools present different behaviors with respect to scalability, in terms of overhead, resource occupation and isolation. Thus this work will help user to select tools according to their application characteristics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Adabala, S., Chadha, V., Chawla, P., Figueiredo, R., Fortes, J., Krsul, I., Matsunaga, A., Tsugawa, M., Zhang, J., Zhao, M., Zhu, L., Zhu, X.: From virtualized resources to virtual computing Grids: the in-vigo system. In: ELSEVIER (ed.) Future Generation Computer Systems (2004)

  2. Barham, P., Dragovic, B., Fraser, K., Hand, S., Harris, T., Ho, A., Neugebauer, R., Pratt, I., Warfield, A.: Xen and the art of virtualization. In: Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pp. 164–177. SOSP, ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Bavier, A., Bowman, M., Chun, B., Culler, D., Karlin, S., Muir, S., Peterson, L., Roscoe, T., Spalink, T., Wawrzoniak, M.: Operating systems support for planetary-scale network services. In: First Symposium on Network Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI ’04, San Francisco, California, March 2004

  4. Bruno, J., Brustoloni, J., Gabber, E., Ozden, B., Silberschatz, A.: Retrofitting quality of service into a time-sharing operating system. In: Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Monterey, California, June 1999

  5. Childs, S., Coghlan, B., OCallaghan, D., Quigley, G., Walsh, J.: A single-computer Grid gateway using virtual machines. In: Proceedings of AINA ’05: The IEEE 19th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, Taiwan. IEEE Computer Society, March 2005

  6. Figueiredo, R.J., Dinda, P.A., Fortes, J.A.B.: A case for Grid computing on virtual machines. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, ICDS, Providence, Rhode Island. IEEE Computer Society, 2003

    Google Scholar 

  7. Gelinas, J.: Virtual private servers and security contexts. http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/miscprj/s_context.hc, 2003

  8. Grid Explorer project. http://www.lri.fr/~{fci/GdX}

  9. Hoxer, H.J., Buchacker, K., Sieh, V.: Implementing a user mode linux with minimal changes from original kernel. In: Proceedings of 9th International Linux System Technology Conference, Cologne, Germany, September 2002

  10. Jiang, X., Xu, D.: Soda: a service-on-demand architecture for application service hosting utility platforms. In: Proceedings of The 12th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC-12), Seattle, Washington, June 2003

  11. Krsul, I., Ganguly, A., Zhang, J., Fortes, J.A.B., Figueiredo, R.J.: Vmplants: Providing and managing virtual machine execution environments for Grid computing. In: Supercomputing ’04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing (CDROM), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. IEEE Computer Society, 2004

    Google Scholar 

  12. NAREGI project. http://www.naregi.org/index_e.html/

  13. Singh, A.: An introduction to virtualization. http://www. kernelthread . com/ publications / virtualization/ www . kernelthread . com / publications / virtualization/. March 2004

  14. Smith, J., Ravi, N.: In: Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, California (2005)

  15. Song, H.J., Liu, X., Jakobsen, D., Bhagwan, R., Zhang, X., Taura, K., Chien, A.: The microGrid: a scientific tool for modeling computational Grids. In: Supercomputing ’00: Proceedings of the 2000 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing (CDROM), Dallas, Texas, p. 53. IEEE Computer Society (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sundararaj, A., Dinda, P.: Towards virtual networks for virtual machine Grid computing. In: Proceedings of the third USENIX Virtual Machine Research and Technology Symposium (VM 04), San Jose, California, May 2004

  17. Waldspurger, C.A.: Memory resource management in VMware ESX server. SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 36(SI), 181–194 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Whitaker, A., Shaw, M., Gribble, S.D.: Lightweight virtual machines for distributed and networked applications. Technical Report 02-02-01, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 2002

  19. Whitaker, A., Shaw, M., Gribble, S.D.: Scale and performance in the denali isolation kernel. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Operating System Design and Implementation (OSDI), Boston, Massachusetts, December 2002

  20. Whitaker, A., Shaw, M., Gribble, S.D.: Scale and performance in the denali isolation kernel. In: OSDI, Boston, Massachusetts, 2002

  21. Xu, D., Jiang, X.: Collapsar: a vm-based architecture for network attack detention center. In: Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Security Symposium (Security ’04), San Diego, California, August 2004

  22. Zhao, M., Zhang, J., Figueiredo, R.J.: Distributed file system support for virtual machines in Grid computing. In: Proceedings HPDC13: The Thirteenth IEEE International Symposium onHigh-PerformanceDistributed Computing, Honolulu, Hawaii, June 2004

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRIA/LRI, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Benjamin Quétier, Vincent Neri & Franck Cappello

Authors
  1. Benjamin Quétier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vincent Neri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Franck Cappello
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin Quétier.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Quétier, B., Neri, V. & Cappello, F. Scalability Comparison of Four Host Virtualization Tools. J Grid Computing 5, 83–98 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-006-9052-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-006-9052-6

Key words

Search

Navigation