research-article

Virtio network paravirtualization driver

Authors:

Shlomo WeissAuthors Info & Claims

Computer Standards & Interfaces, Volume 34, Issue 1

Pages 36 - 47

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2011.05.002

Published: 01 January 2012 Publication History

Abstract

One of the techniques used to improve I/O performance of virtual machines is paravirtualization. Paravirtualized devices are intended to reduce the performance overhead on full virtualization where all hardware devices are emulated. The interface of a paravirtualized device is not identical to that of the underlying hardware. The OS of the virtual guest machine must be ported in order to use a paravirtualized device. In this paper, the network virtualization done by the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is described. The KVM model is different from other Virtual Machines Monitors (VMMs) because the KVM is a Linux kernel model and it depends on hardware support. In this work, the overhead of using such virtual networks is been measured. A paravirtualized model by using the virtio [38] network driver is described, and some performance results of web benchmark on the two models are presented. Research highlights This work provides an analysis of KVMs network I/O performance. Examines an Intel processor's virtualization ability and how this ability is used for network I/O. Compares an emulated network driver with the virtio paravirtualized driver. Provides an applicative comparison on web servers, and Determine the difference on CPU and memory utilization of guest machines.

References

[1]

D. Abramson, J. Jackson, S. Muthrasanaullur, G. Nieger, G. Regnier, R. Sankaran, I. Schoinas, R. Uhlig, B. Vembu, J. Wiegert, Intel virtualization technology for directed I/O, Intel Technology Journal, 10 (2006) 179-192.

[2]

K. Adams, O. Agesen, A comparison of software and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization, in: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, 2006, pp. 2-13.

Digital Library

[3]

J. Almeida, V. Almeida, D. Yates, Measuring the behavior of a world-wide web server, in: Technical report, Boston University, 1996. http://www.ncstrl.org:8900/ncstrl/servlet/search?formname=detail&id=oai

[4]

Apache http server project. http://httpd.apache.org/

[5]

P. Apparao, R. Iyer, X. Zhang, D. Newell, T. Adelmeyer, Characterization & analysis of a server consolidation benchmark, in: Proceedings of the Fourth ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments, 2008, pp. 21-30.

Digital Library

[6]

G. Banga, P. Druschel, Measuring the capacity of a web server, in: Proceedings of the USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems, 1997.

[7]

F. Bellard, Qemu, a fast and portable dynamic translator, in: Proceedings of the annual conference on USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2005.

Digital Library

[8]

M. Ben-Yehuda, J. Mason, O. Krieger, J. Xenidis, L. VanDoorn, A. Mallick, J. Nakajima, E. Wahlig, Utilizing IOMMUs for virtualization in Linux and Xen, in: Ottawa Linux Symposium, 2006.

[9]

L. Buytenhek, bridge-utils, IEEE 802.1d ethernet bridging. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26089

[10]

J.P. Casazza, M. Greenfield, K. Shi, Redefining server performance characterization for virtualization benchmarking, Intel Technology Journal, 10 (2006) 243-252.

[11]

L. Cherkasova, R. Gardner, Measuring CPU overhead for I/O processing in the Xen virtual machine monitor, in: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2005.

Digital Library

[12]

J. Dike, tunctl create and manage persistent TUN/TAP interfaces. http://tunctl.sourceforge.net/

[13]

M. Fenn, M.A. Murphy, J. Martin, S. Goasguen, An evaluation of kvm for use in cloud computing, in: International Conference on the Virtual Computing Initiative, 2008.

[14]

R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, T. Berners-Lee, Hypertext transfer protocol HTTP/1.1. http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2616.html

[15]

J. Fisher-Ogden. Hardware Support for Efficient Virtualization. PhD thesis, University of California, 2006. http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/jfisherogden/hardwareVirt.pdf.

[16]

M. Gates, A. Tirumala, J. Dugan, K. Gibbs, Iperf User Docs, 2004.

[17]

R.P. Goldberg, Survey of virtual machine research, Computer, 7 (1974) 34-45.

Digital Library

[18]

I. Habib, Virtualization with KVM, Linux Journal, 166 (2008) 8.

[19]

B. Hayes, Cloud computing, Communications of the ACM, 51 (2008) 9-11.

Digital Library

[20]

J.L. Hennessy, D.A. Patterson, Computer architecture: a quantitative approach, in: Computer architecture: a quantitative approach, Morgan Kaufmann, 2003, pp. 788-813.

[21]

D.A. Joseph, V. Paxson, S. Kim, tcpdump Tutorial, University of California, 2006. http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/ee122/fa06/projects/tcpdump-2up.pdf

[22]

H. Kim, H. Lim, J. Jeong, H. Jo, J. Lee, Task-aware virtual machine scheduling for I/O performance, in: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments, 2009, pp. 101-110.

Digital Library

[23]

A. Kivity, Y. Kamay, D. Laor, U. Lublin, A. Liguori, kvm: the linux virtual machine monitor, in: Ottawa Linux Symposium, 2007, pp. 225-230.

[24]

J. Liu, W. Huang, B. Abali, D.K. Panda, High performance VMM-bypass I/O in virtual machines, in: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2006.

[25]

A. Menon, A.L. Cox, W. Zwaenepoel, Optimizing network virtualization in Xen, in: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2006.

[26]

D. Mosberger, T. Jin, httperf a tool for measuring web server performance, in: Technical report, HP Research Labs, 1998. http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/httperf/wisp98/httperf.pdf

[27]

A. Muller, D. Happe, G.J. Humphrey, S. Wilson, Virtualization with VMware ESX Server, in: Virtualization with VMware ESX Server, Syngress Pub., 2005, pp. 4-15.

[28]

M. Muuss, T. Slattery, ttcp: Test tcp, 1991. http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/benchmarks/ttcp.c

[29]

G. Neiger, A. Santoni, F. Leung, D. Rodgers, R. Uhlig, Intel virtualization technology: hardware support for efficient processor virtualization, Intel Technology Journal, 10 (2006) 167-178.

[30]

Y. Ni, J. Zhang, D.H. Cooley, Nettest: an integrated web-based test tool, in: World Conference of the WWW, Internet and Intranet, 1997, pp. 710-711.

[31]

O. Pentakalos, An Introduction to the InfiniBand architecture. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/04/windows.html

[32]

A. Perilli, Red Hat acquired Qumranet. http://www.virtualization.info/2008/09/red-hat-acquires-qumranet-suddently.html

[33]

D. Pitts, B. Ball, Red Hat Linux, in: Red Hat Linux, SAMS publishing, 1998, pp. 344-346.

[34]

R. Pratt, P. Barham, B. Dragovic, K. Fraser, S. Hand, T. Harris, A. Ho, R. Neugebauer, A. Warfield, Xen and the art of virtualization, in: Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, 2003, pp. 164-177.

[35]

F. Prefect, L. Doan, S. Gold, Th. Wicki, W. Wilcke, Performance limiting factors in http (Web) server operations, in: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE International Computer Conference, 1996, pp. 267.

[36]

M. Rosenblum, T. Garfinkel, Virtual machine monitors: current technology and future trends, Computer, 38 (2005) 39-47.

Digital Library

[37]

R. Russell, lguest: implementing the little Linux hypervisor, in: Ottawa Linux Symposium, 2007, pp. 173-178.

[38]

R. Russell, virtio: towards a de-facto standard for virtual I/O devices, SIGOPS Operations Systems Review, 42 (2008) 95-103.

Digital Library

[39]

E. James, Smith and Ravi Nair. The architecture of virtual machines, Computer, 38 (2005) 32-38.

Digital Library

[40]

J.E. Smith, R. Nair, Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes, Morgan-Kaufmann Publishers, 2005.

[41]

J. Sugerman, G. Venkitachalam, B.H. Lim, Virtualizing I/O devices on VMware Workstation's hosted virtual machine monitor, in: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2001.

Digital Library

[42]

J. Trank, Packet Processing with Intel Multi-Core Processors, 2008. http://download.intel.com/technology/advanced_comm/QuickAssist_319889-001US.pdf

[43]

Intel 64 and IA-32 architectures software developer's manual volume 2b: Instruction set reference, n-z, 2009.

[44]

D. Ung, C. Cifuentes, Machine-adaptable dynamic binary translation, SIGPLAN Notices, 35 (2000) 41-51.

Digital Library

[45]

L. VanDoorn, Hardware virtualization trends, in: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Virtual execution environments, 2006, pp. 45-45.

Digital Library

[46]

VMWare Leader in Virtualization Market. http://www.hostreview.com/icontent/the-blog/vmware-leader-virtualization-market

[47]

B. Ward, The Complete Guide to VMware Workstation, in: The Complete Guide to VMware Workstation, No Starch Press, 2002, pp. 7-16.

[48]

J.J. Wlodarz, Virtualization: A Double-Edged Sword, 2007. http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:0705.2786

Cited By

Kanatsu MYamada H(2024)HPCnix: make HPC Apps more easier like shell scriptProceedings of the International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region Workshops10.1145/3636480.3637231(83-86)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636480.3637231
Ferraro DPalazzi LGavioli FGuzzinati MBernardi ARouxel BBurgio PSolieri M(2023)Time-sensitive autonomous architecturesReal-Time Systems10.1007/s11241-023-09404-259:4(568-608)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11241-023-09404-2
Xiao P(2020)A Virtual Resource Pricing Mechanism Based on Three-Side Gaming Model in Large-Scale Cloud EnvironmentsInternational Journal of e-Collaboration10.4018/IJeC.202007010216:3(17-32)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/IJeC.2020070102
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Virtio network paravirtualization driver
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Performance
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Testing, certification and licensing

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Live gang migration of virtual machines
HPDC '11: Proceedings of the 20th international symposium on High performance distributed computing

This paper addresses the problem of simultaneously migrating a group of co-located and live virtual machines (VMs), i.e, VMs executing on the same physical machine. We refer to such a mass simultaneous migration of active VMs as "live gang migration". ...
Pre-Copy and post-copy VM live migration for memory intensive applications
Euro-Par'12: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Parallel processing workshops

Virtualization technology provides a means for server consolidation, reducing the number of physical servers required for running a given workload. Virtual Machine (VM) live migration facilitates the transfer of a running (VM) between physical hosts ...
Inter-rack live migration of multiple virtual machines
VTDC '12: Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on Virtualization Technologies in Distributed Computing Date

Within datacenters, often multiple virtual machines (VMs) need to be live migrated simultaneously for various reasons such as maintenance, power savings, and load balancing. Such mass simultaneous live migration of multiple VMs can trigger large data ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

Copyright © Elsevier B.V.

Publisher

Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.

Netherlands

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2012

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 30 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Kanatsu MYamada H(2024)HPCnix: make HPC Apps more easier like shell scriptProceedings of the International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region Workshops10.1145/3636480.3637231(83-86)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636480.3637231
Ferraro DPalazzi LGavioli FGuzzinati MBernardi ARouxel BBurgio PSolieri M(2023)Time-sensitive autonomous architecturesReal-Time Systems10.1007/s11241-023-09404-259:4(568-608)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11241-023-09404-2
Xiao P(2020)A Virtual Resource Pricing Mechanism Based on Three-Side Gaming Model in Large-Scale Cloud EnvironmentsInternational Journal of e-Collaboration10.4018/IJeC.202007010216:3(17-32)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/IJeC.2020070102
Brandis KDzombeta SHaufe K(2018)Towards a framework for governance architecture management in cloud environmentsFuture Generation Computer Systems10.5555/2748143.274837632:C(274-281)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2748143.2748376
Yoneji IFukai TShinagawa TKato KHaddad HWainwright RChbeir R(2018)Unified hardware abstraction layer with device masqueradeProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/3167132.3167250(1102-1108)Online publication date: 9-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3167132.3167250
Kim JLee SJin H(2016)Supporting virtualization standard for network devices in RTEMS real-time operating systemACM SIGBED Review10.1145/2907972.290797713:1(35-40)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2907972.2907977
Rizzo LGarzarella SLettieri GMaffione VCrowley PRizzo LMathy L(2016)A Study of Speed Mismatches Between Communicating Virtual MachinesProceedings of the 2016 Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems10.1145/2881025.2881037(61-67)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2881025.2881037
de Lacerda Ruivo TAltayo GGarzoglio GTimm SKim HNoh SRaicu IReed DSun XFoster I(2014)Exploring infiniband hardware virtualization in OpenNebula towards efficient high-performance computingProceedings of the 14th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing10.1109/CCGrid.2014.90(943-948)Online publication date: 26-May-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CCGrid.2014.90

View Options

View options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents