Paper Info
Title
Application level ballooning for efficient server consolidation
Abstract
Systems software like databases and language runtimes typically manage memory themselves to exploit application knowledge unavailable to the OS. Traditionally deployed on dedicated machines, they are designed to be statically configured with memory sufficient for peak load. In virtualization scenarios (cloud computing, server consolidation), however, static peak provisioning of RAM to applications dramatically reduces the efficiency and cost-saving benefits of virtualization. Unfortunately, existing memory "ballooning" techniques used to dynamically reallocate physical memory between VMs badly impact the performance of applications which manage their own memory. We address this problem by extending ballooning to applications (here, a database engine and Java runtime) so that memory can be efficiently and effectively moved between virtualized instances as the demands of each change over time. The results are significantly lower memory requirements to provide the same performance guarantees to a collocated set of VM running such applications, with minimal overhead or intrusive changes to application code.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2465351.2465384
EuroSys
Keywords
Field
DocType
existing memory,virtualization scenario,physical memory,application code,performance guarantee,peak load,lower memory requirement,efficient server consolidation,static peak,application level ballooning,own memory,application knowledge,hypervisor
Virtualization,Extended memory,Physical address,Computer science,Virtual memory,Real-time computing,Memory management,Flat memory model,Overlay,Operating system,Thin provisioning
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
24
0.89
20
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tudor-Ioan Salomie1692.65
Gustavo Alonso25476612.79
Timothy Roscoe33118299.48
K. Elphinstone4119065.76