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A Performance Evaluation of Block I/O Paravirtualization and Virtual Machine Images

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Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2011)

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Abstract

Cloud Computing continues to be a rapidly evolving and prevalent paradigm where Quality of Service (QoS) has a pivotal role to play in guaranteeing performance and provisioning of resources on-demand in a timely fashion. Improvements to the performance of Cloud technology ensure provider profitability and an increased number of applications that can make use of a Cloud where overheads would have otherwise limited usage. This paper presents the results of a quantitative evaluation into the performance overheads of accessing images, via a Hypervisor’s virtual block I/O device using various image types. Two Virtual Machine Managers (VMMs) are evaluated: XEN and KVM alongside the image types they support. Benchmark results demonstrate the performance of XEN exceeding KVM in a greater number of benchmark tests. Conclusions are drawn from the results on the suitability of these technologies for data intensive applications and applications requiring highly dynamic resource sets, where making an uninformed decision on what technology or image type to use could prevent an application reaching its full potential.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, The University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Django Armstrong & Karim Djemame

Authors
  1. Django Armstrong
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  2. Karim Djemame
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Django Armstrong .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SUNY Empire State College, Hauppauge, 11788, New York, USA

    Ivan Ivanov

  2. , Centre for Telematics and Information Te, University of Twente, Enschede, 7500 AE, The Netherlands

    Marten van Sinderen

  3. Collaboration & Research on, Enterprise Systems &, Interdisciplinary Institute for, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Boris Shishkov

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Armstrong, D., Djemame, K. (2012). A Performance Evaluation of Block I/O Paravirtualization and Virtual Machine Images. In: Ivanov, I., van Sinderen, M., Shishkov, B. (eds) Cloud Computing and Services Science. CLOSER 2011. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2326-3_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2326-3_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-2325-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-2326-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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