QEMU/KVM Based In-Memory Block Cache Module for Virtualization Environment

TaeHoon Kim, KwangHyeok Song, JaeChun No, SungSoon Park

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2017.44.10.1005

Recently, virtualization has become an essential component of cloud computing due to its various strengths, including maximizing server resource utilization, easy-to-maintain software, and enhanced data protection. However, since virtualization allows sharing physical resources among the VMs, the system performance can be deteriorated due to device contentions. In this paper, we first investigate the I/O overhead based on the number of VMs on the same server platform and analyze the block I/O process of the KVM hypervisor. We also propose an in-memory block cache mechanism, called QBic, to overcome I/O virtualization latency. QBic is capable of monitoring the block I/O process of the hypervisor and stores the data with a high access frequency in the cache. As a result, QBic provides a fast response for VMs and reduces the I/O contention to physical devices. Finally, we present a performance measurement of QBic to verify its effectiveness.