A Study on Virtualization and Energy Efficiency Using Linux
Helin, Olli (2012)
Helin, Olli
2012
Teknis-luonnontieteellinen koulutusohjelma
Tieto- ja sähkötekniikan tiedekunta - Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2012-03-07
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201203211077
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201203211077
Tiivistelmä
Virtualization has in recent years risen in popularity to the extent of changing the way information technology infrastructure in enterprise data centers is built. Once known as a technique to achieve time sharing between processes, virtualization now offers flexibility in resource usage and software deployment, security, and energy savings by consolidation of many virtualized servers into a single physical one.
However, in its modern form, virtualization is still a relatively young technology. There are many studies regarding the performance of different virtualization technologies, but only a few emphasize energy efficiency. When information technology service providers invest in more server hardware, their energy expenses also rise. As optimization for energy efficiency becomes more and more important, possible power consumption overhead caused by virtualization will be an important factor when setting up virtualized servers.
In this thesis we studied virtualization using Linux with focus on energy efficiency. We conducted sets of performance tests while measuring power consumption, and assessed how virtualization affects energy efficiency. The tests included synthetic tests and more practical web server tests, with single and multiple virtual machines. We tested various configurations to find out what one should generally note when building a virtualized environment with focus on energy efficiency. All of this was done using various virtualization technologies to find out their differences regarding energy efficiency. The tested technologies were KVM, Xen, and vSphere Hypervisor.
With respect to energy efficiency or performance, we observed differences in virtualization technologies, and the same technology was not always the best in every situation. We found KVM to offer good energy efficiency, and Xen to have some trouble with recent Linux versions. In web server tests, the use of paravirtualization had almost no effect on power consumption. Processor performance states affected performance and energy efficiency. Power consumption had a tendency to be generally high with bare-metal virtual machine monitors Xen and vSphere Hypervisor. More research with a wider selection of test hardware and software is required to better define the setups and situations where this power consumption trend and the possible effect of paravirtualization on energy efficiency are observable.
However, in its modern form, virtualization is still a relatively young technology. There are many studies regarding the performance of different virtualization technologies, but only a few emphasize energy efficiency. When information technology service providers invest in more server hardware, their energy expenses also rise. As optimization for energy efficiency becomes more and more important, possible power consumption overhead caused by virtualization will be an important factor when setting up virtualized servers.
In this thesis we studied virtualization using Linux with focus on energy efficiency. We conducted sets of performance tests while measuring power consumption, and assessed how virtualization affects energy efficiency. The tests included synthetic tests and more practical web server tests, with single and multiple virtual machines. We tested various configurations to find out what one should generally note when building a virtualized environment with focus on energy efficiency. All of this was done using various virtualization technologies to find out their differences regarding energy efficiency. The tested technologies were KVM, Xen, and vSphere Hypervisor.
With respect to energy efficiency or performance, we observed differences in virtualization technologies, and the same technology was not always the best in every situation. We found KVM to offer good energy efficiency, and Xen to have some trouble with recent Linux versions. In web server tests, the use of paravirtualization had almost no effect on power consumption. Processor performance states affected performance and energy efficiency. Power consumption had a tendency to be generally high with bare-metal virtual machine monitors Xen and vSphere Hypervisor. More research with a wider selection of test hardware and software is required to better define the setups and situations where this power consumption trend and the possible effect of paravirtualization on energy efficiency are observable.