A method of multi-VM automatic network configuration

Abstract

In multi-VM (virtual machine) environment, the virtual machine network management plays an important role. Traditional multi-VM management systems are accustomed to using the DHCP mechanism. However, with the development of virtual network technology, DHCP is not suitable for constructing the stable and transparent virtual network environment. In this paper, we propose a method of multi-VM automatic network configuration, which focuses on multi-VM to initialize and configure the virtual network and provides a unified network management for physical and virtual machine system. We introduce concise communication model and protocol into the system to form a unified set of management mechanisms devoting to construct and simplify virtual machine environment. Through the performance comparison with XenServer, the multi-VM automatic network configuration system could improve the communication efficiency by 8–17% in average during the period of network initialization, and it stabilizes the whole network during the period of changing network configuration.