Title: A framework for comparative performance study on virtualised machines

Authors: Jiaqi Zhao; Jie Tao; Karl Fürlinger

Addresses: School of Basic Sciences, Changchun University of Technology, China ' Steinbuch Center for Computing, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany ' Department of Computer Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

Abstract: The virtualisation technology has been widely used today in various research fields, including high performance computing, grid computing, cloud computing as well as server-client systems. The virtualisation introduces advantages such as on-demand customised resource provision, easy management and support for multiple Operating Systems, etc. However, this technology also results in a performance loss due to the additional virtualisation layer. To help application developers study the performance issues on virtualised multicore machines, we developed a tool framework with a set of performance tools that collect the runtime performance data and demonstrate the different runtime application behaviour on both the physical machine and the virtual machine within a single view. We applied the tool framework to analyse a number of benchmark applications and conducted optimisations based on the analysis discovery. The initial experimental results show a significant performance gain.

Keywords: performance tools; virtualisation; code optimisation; profiling; virtualised machines; multicore machines; runtime performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2014.065772

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2014 Vol.17 No.2/3, pp.82 - 99

Received: 10 Jul 2013
Accepted: 30 Sep 2013
Published online: 19 Nov 2014 *

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