VirtCache: virtual machine cache using user I/O access pattern anaylsis

Abstract

Together with the rapid development of IT technology, cloud computing has been considered as the next generation's computing infrastructure. One of the essential components of cloud computing is the virtual machine technology that enables to reduce the data center cost with better resource utilization. Especially, VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is receiving explosive attentions from IT markets due to its advantages of easier software management, greater data protection, and lower expenses. However, sharing the hosting server’s resources between VMs is a tradeoff in VDI because it can cause significant I/O degradation. In this paper, we present a VM-level cache, called virtCache, that is combined with a light-weight, real-time monitoring module to check the resource utilization of VM and hosting server in a transparent way. Our performance measurement shows that virtCache not only generates better I/O bandwidth by using the efficient data access prediction but it also provides easier resource management by offering the real-time resource states.