Pre-Filter-Copy: Efficient and Self-Adaptive Live Migration of Virtual Machines

Abstract

Live migration of virtual machines (VMs) is useful for resource management of data centers and cloud platforms. The precopy algorithm is widely used for memory migration. However, when encountered with write-intensive workloads, the precopy's straightforward iteration strategy will become inefficient. Worse still, it is hard to tune the performance with the existing parameters, unless load characteristics are known in advance. In this paper, we propose an improved pre-filter-copy (PFC) algorithm. The main target is to reduce migration time and bandwidth resource consumption of the precopy algorithm, while keeping downtime at the same level. We designed a novel data filter to achieve this goal. In each round of iteration, it forecasts the pages that will be subsequently dirtied and then filters them from the send list. Meanwhile, previously filtered pages will be reconsidered, to see if they can be added to the send list. This ensures that the downtime will not be increased. Furthermore, a new parameter is proposed to improve the adaptivity of the precopy algorithm. Experimental results show that the PFC algorithm significantly reduces migration time and the amount of migrated data, while keeping the downtime at the same level.

Modelling VM Migration in a Fog Computing Environment

“…There are three key parameters to measure the performance of live migration [20], such as downtime, which represents the amount of time the VM is halted during the migration, total migration time carrying the amount of time elapsed for the whole process and the amount of dirty pages migrated referring to the data being changed during the process, and, therefore, having to be further sent over again.…”

Precopy Live Migration on Core Network Virtualization Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem

“…Kemudian VM di-suspend sehingga sisa page memory ditransmisikan ke host tujuan. Algoritma precopy dapat membuat waktu downtime lebih baik pada algoritma stop-and-copy, namun memiliki kekurangan dapat meningkatkan waktu migrasi dan konsumsi bandwidth (Ruan et al, 2016). Kelebihan utama algoritma precopy adalah reliabilitas dan kehandalan, karena jika proses live migration akan diulang kekondisi awal.…”

A Novel Hybrid-Copy Algorithm for Live Migration of Virtual Machine

“…Baruchi et al [11] introduced a method to identify the workload cycles of a VM based on the information to reduce live migration overhead. Ruan et al [12] proposed a novel data filter mechanism to improve the performance of the pre-copy algorithm in terms of the migration time and the amount of migrated data.…”

“…Many live migration algorithms have been proposed to minimize both downtime and total migration time. In terms of the memory data transfer order, live migration algorithms can be classified into three categories: the pre-copy algorithm [3,[9][10][11][12], the post-copy algorithm [13][14][15], and the hybrid-copy algorithm [16][17][18].…”