Optimization of virtual machine sizing and consolidation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9569236-B2
Application number	US-201314023861-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 11, 2013
Priority date	Jan 31, 2013
Publication date	Feb 14, 2017
Grant date	Feb 14, 2017

Abstract

The sizing of virtual machines is optimized based on projected performance metrics. All virtual machine configuration resources are normalized by a processing device. The normalized resources for the virtual machine configurations are then stored in a catalogue. An application is then profiled to obtain resource demand estimates for each virtual machine configuration and a base performance is calculated for the application. The base performance is used to predict performance estimates on all virtual machine configurations in the catalogue. Accordingly, a virtual machine configuration having a lowest response time is selected.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer system, comprising: a processor, a system memory, and a bus that couples various system components including the system memory to the processor, the system configured to perform a method comprising: normalizing, with a processing device, resource metrics (R) for a plurality of virtual machine configuration sizes with respect to profiled metrics, wherein each virtual machine configuration size is normalized as R j =[r 1 j , r 2 j , r 3 j , r 4 j ], j is a virtual machine configuration size, r 1 j is central processing unit speed, r 2 j is memory size, r 3 j is input/output speed, and r 4 j is network speed and the profiled metrics are observed values of r 1 , r 2 , r 3 , and r 4 ; storing the normalized resource metrics associated with each of the virtual machine configuration sizes in a catalogue; calculating and storing a demand metric measurement (D) for each resource in the virtual machine configuration size of a plurality of virtual machine configuration sizes to obtain resource demand estimates for each of the resources of a respective virtual machine configuration size; wherein the calculating comprises: profiling an application for each of the virtual machine configuration sizes: executing the application on a first partition of a memory and a second partition of a memory; calculating the demand metric measurement (D) for an execution time of each of the resources associated with a respective virtual machine configuration size by using a demand metric measurement (D i =a i +b i R i ) for each of the resources (R); the each D i is a demand metric calculation for a respective resource (R i ) of a calculation under an execution time, the a i corresponds to the first partition and the b i corresponds to the second partition; storing the a i and the b i coefficients of the demand resource function for each of the respective resources (R) for each virtual machine configuration size; calculating a base performance for the application; predicting performance estimates on each of the virtual machine configuration sizes in the catalogue by applying the demand metric measurements (D) of the resources associated with each of the respective virtual machine configuration sizes; selecting, based on the predicting, a virtual machine configuration size in the catalogue having a lowest response time that meets the application performance objectives; invoking the selected virtual machine configuration size; and migrating the application to the selected virtual machine configuration size.

2. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the resources for a virtual machine configuration include central processing unit resources, memory resources, disk resources, and network resources.

3. The computer system of claim 1 , further comprising a base profiler server, the base profiler server being partitioned into a small partition and a big partition, each having central processing unit resources, memory resources, disk resources, and network resources.

4. The computer system of claim 3 , wherein all virtual machine configurations are normalized with respect to a resource specification on the small partition.

5. The computer system of claim 3 , wherein the application is executed on both the small partition and the big partition of the base profiler server for each virtual machine configuration to obtain a demand-resource function.

6. The computer system of claim 5 , wherein the normalized resources for each virtual machine configuration are plugged into the demand-resource function to obtain the resource demand estimates for each virtual machine configuration.

7. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the predicting of performance estimates further comprises running a mean value analysis to obtain a response time for all virtual machine configurations in response to a memory demand being less than a resource demand.

8. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the predicting of performance estimates further comprises running a mean value analysis with a partitioned memory demand to obtain a response time for all virtual machine configurations in response to a memory demand being more than a resource demand.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Birke Robert
• Chen Yiyu L
• Schmatz Martin L

Classifications

• G06F2201/815

  Virtual · CPC title

• G06F2209/501

  Performance criteria · CPC title

• G06F9/45533 Primary

  Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors · CPC title

• G06F9/5027

  the resource being a machine, e.g. CPUs, Servers, Terminals · CPC title

• G06F2009/4557

  Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing · CPC title