Automatic Memory Control of Multiple Virtual Machines on a Consolidated Server

Automatic Memory Control of Multiple Virtual Machines on a Consolidated Server

Abstract—Through virtualization, multiple virtual machines can coexist and operate on one physical machine. When virtual machines < Final Year Projects 2016 > VMs compete for memory, the performances of applications deteriorate, especially those of memory-intensive applications. In this study, we aim to optimize memory control techniques using a balloon driver for server consolidation. Our contribution is three-fold: (1) We design and implement an automatic control system for memory based on a Xen balloon driver. To avoid interference with VM monitor operation, our system works in user mode; therefore, the system is easily applied in practice. (2) We design an adaptive global-scheduling algorithm to regulate memory. This algorithm is based on a dynamic baseline, which can adjust memory allocation according to the memory used by the VMs. (3) We evaluate our optimized solution in a real environment with 10 VMs and well-known benchmarks (DaCapo and Phoronix Test Suites). Experiments confirm that our system can improve the performance of memory-intensive and disk-intensive applications by up to 500% and 300%, respectively. This toolkit has been released for free download as a GNU General Public License v3 software.