Black box scheduling for resource intensive virtual machine workloads with interference models

• The predictive capacity of several system-level metrics is evaluated.
• Different models are used to predict slowdown for multiplexed workloads.
• A novel approach using SVM-based classification and prediction is suggested.
• Practical benefits are demonstrated using prediction-based scheduling algorithms.

Modern datacenters consist of increasingly powerful hardware. Achieving high levels of utilization on this hardware often requires the execution of multiple concurrent workloads. Virtualization has emerged as an efficient means to isolate workloads by partitioning large physical resources using self-contained virtual machine images. Despite the many advantages, some challenges regarding performance isolation still need to be addressed. Unmanaged multiplexing of resource intensive workloads has the potential to cause unexpected variances in workload performance.In this paper, we address this issue using performance models based on the runtime characteristics of virtualized workloads. A set of resource intensive workloads is benchmarked with increasing degrees of multiplexing. Resource usage profiles are constructed using the metrics made available by the Xen hypervisor. Based on these profiles, performance degradation is predicted using several existing modeling techniques. In addition, we propose a novel approach using both the classification and regression capabilities of support vector machines. Application clustering is used to identify several application types with distinct performance profiles. Finally, we evaluate the developed performance models by introducing several new scheduling techniques. We demonstrate that the integration of these models in the scheduling logic can significantly improve the overall performance of multiplexed workloads.