An Evaluation of KVM for Use in Cloud Computing.PDF

An Evaluation of KVM for Use in Cloud Computing M. FENN, M. A. MURPHY, J. MARTIN, and S. GOASGUEN Clemson University In this paper we describe a virtual cluster based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) as an alternative to VMWare and Xen. Specically we show how the virtual cluster is built and tailored to t virtual organizations. The technique presented in this paper, known as the Virtual Organization Cluster Model, shows great potential for cloud computing. In our implementation, we used a minimalist installation of Slackware Linux 12 on 14 compute nodes, ensuring minimal host overhead. Our prototype Virtual Organization Cluster is composed of 28 virtual computes nodes, each running CentOS 5.1 with Condor, and MPI. Results of testing the prototype were encouraging, with the exception of network performance. Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.4 [Computer Systems Organization]: Performance of SystemsDesign studies ; Performance attributes; C.2.4 [Computer-Communication Net- works]: Distributed Systems General Terms: Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance Additional Key Words and Phrases: Virtual Machines, KVM, High-Performance Computing 1. INTRODUCTION A current problem in scientic computing is that the expertise needed to deploy and maintain a cluster remains scarce despite recent declines in hardware costs. Smaller research groups may not be able to aord to have their own clusters, and purchasing time on an existing cluster raises concerns such as vendor lock-in and data security. In this paper, we present a cloud computing model which denes a minimum specication for a compute cluster. This clusters sole purpose is to host other com- pute clusters through virtualization. In this way, a Virtualization Service Provider (VSP) can sell compute power without having to direct