Speaker
Mr
Andrea Chierici
(INFN-CNAF)
Description
This work shows the optimizations we have been investigating and
implementing at the KVM virtualization layer in the INFN Tier-1 at
CNAF, based on more than a year of experience in running thousands of
virtual machines in a production environment used by several
international collaborations. These optimizations increase the
adaptability of virtualization solutions to demanding applications
like those run in our institute (High-Energy Physics).
We will show performance differences among different filesystems (like
ext3 vs ext4 vs xfs) and caching options, when used as KVM host local
storage. We will provide guidelines for solid state disks (SSD)
adoption, for deployment of SR-IOV enabled hardware, for providing
PCI-passthrough network cards to virtual machines and what is the best
solution to distribute and instantiate read-only virtual machine
images.
This work has been driven by the project called Worker Nodes on Demand
Service (WNoDeS), a framework designed to offer local, grid or
cloud-based access to computing and storage resources, preserving
maximum compatibility with existing computing center policies and
work-flows.
Summary
We will show performance differences among different filesystems (like
ext3 vs ext4 vs xfs) and caching options, when used as KVM host local
storage. We will provide guidelines for solid state disks (SSD)
adoption, for deployment of SR-IOV enabled hardware, for providing
PCI-passthrough network cards to virtual machines and what is the best
solution to distribute and instantiate read-only virtual machine
images.
Author
Mr
Andrea Chierici
(INFN-CNAF)
Co-author
Mr
Davide Salomoni
(INFN-CNAF)
