3,744 research outputs found
Performance counter-based strategies to improve data locality on multiprocessor systems: reordering and page migration techniques
In this dissertation we approach the study of Precise Event-Based Sampling (PEBS) techniques to improve the performance of applications on a NUMA, Itanium2-based system. We demonstrate that a low-cost, PEBS profiling can support strategies to improve the performance of an important group of computational and scientific codes in runtime. In addition, the accurate information provided by the new Event Adress Registers (EAR) of the Intel Itanium architecture helps foster the development of new data allocation strategies. Following this line, we have also developed a series of dynamic page migration PEBS strategies. Specifically, two problems are addressed: how to improve the performance of locality optimisation techniques for irregular codes in runtime, particularising for the Sparse Matrix-Vector product kernel, and how to develop strategies for dynamic page migration.
To summarise, the main contributions of this dissertation are:
1. A study of the different factors that affect the performance, as well as data and thread allocation policies, in the FinisTerrae supercomputer, the target platform in which this thesis relies on.
2. The implementation of a performance model for FinisTerrae.
3. The development of hardware counter-based strategies to assist reordering techniques
for irregular codes in order to reduce their cost and improve their behaviour.
4. The development of novel hardware counter-guided, dynamic page migration
algorithms that take advantage of the new features provided by the PEBS.
As a software contribution, we present a user-level page-migration framework to monitor,
sample and control an application in runtime
On the Benefit of Virtualization: Strategies for Flexible Server Allocation
Virtualization technology facilitates a dynamic, demand-driven allocation and
migration of servers. This paper studies how the flexibility offered by network
virtualization can be used to improve Quality-of-Service parameters such as
latency, while taking into account allocation costs. A generic use case is
considered where both the overall demand issued for a certain service (for
example, an SAP application in the cloud, or a gaming application) as well as
the origins of the requests change over time (e.g., due to time zone effects or
due to user mobility), and we present online and optimal offline strategies to
compute the number and location of the servers implementing this service. These
algorithms also allow us to study the fundamental benefits of dynamic resource
allocation compared to static systems. Our simulation results confirm our
expectations that the gain of flexible server allocation is particularly high
in scenarios with moderate dynamics
An innovative approach to performance metrics calculus in cloud computing environments: a guest-to-host oriented perspective
In virtualized systems, the task of profiling and resource monitoring is not straight-forward. Many datacenters perform CPU overcommittment using hypervisors, running multiple virtual machines on a single computer where the total number of virtual CPUs exceeds the total number of physical CPUs available.
From a customer point of view, it could be indeed interesting to know if the purchased service levels are effectively respected by the cloud provider. The innovative approach to performance profiling described in this work is based on the use of virtual performance counters, only recently made available by some hypervisors to their virtual machines, to implement guest-wide profiling. Although it isn't possible for the virtual machine to access Virtual Machine Monitor, with this method it is able to gather interesting informations to deduce the state of resource overcommittment of the virtualization host where it is executed. Tests have been carried out inside the compute nodes of FIWARE Genoa Node, an instance of a widely distributed federated community cloud, based on OpenStack and KVM. AgiLab-DITEN, the laboratory I belonged to and where I conducted my studies, together with TnT-Lab\u2013DITEN and CNIT-GE-Unit designed, installed and configured the whole Genoa Node, that was hosted on DITEN-UniGE equipment rooms. All the software measuring instruments, operating systems and programs used in this research are publicly available and free, and can be easily installed in a micro
instance of virtual machine, rapidly deployable also in public clouds
Power Modeling and Resource Optimization in Virtualized Environments
The provisioning of on-demand cloud services has revolutionized the IT industry. This emerging paradigm has drastically increased the growth of data centers (DCs) worldwide. Consequently, this rising number of DCs is contributing to a large amount of world total power consumption. This has directed the attention of researchers and service providers to investigate a power-aware solution for the deployment and management of these systems and networks. However, these solutions could be bene\ufb01cial only if derived from a precisely estimated power consumption at run-time. Accuracy in power estimation is a challenge in virtualized environments due to the lack of certainty of actual resources consumed by virtualized entities and of their impact on applications\u2019 performance. The heterogeneous cloud, composed of multi-tenancy architecture, has also raised several management challenges for both service providers and their clients. Task scheduling and resource allocation in such a system are considered as an NP-hard problem. The inappropriate allocation of resources causes the under-utilization of servers, hence reducing throughput and energy e\ufb03ciency. In this context, the cloud framework needs an e\ufb00ective management solution to maximize the use of available resources and capacity, and also to reduce the impact of their carbon footprint on the environment with reduced power consumption. This thesis addresses the issues of power measurement and resource utilization in virtualized environments as two primary objectives. At \ufb01rst, a survey on prior work of server power modeling and methods in virtualization architectures is carried out. This helps investigate the key challenges that elude the precision of power estimation when dealing with virtualized entities. A di\ufb00erent systematic approach is then presented to improve the prediction accuracy in these networks, considering the resource abstraction at di\ufb00erent architectural levels. Resource usage monitoring at the host and guest helps in identifying the di\ufb00erence in performance between the two. Using virtual Performance Monitoring Counters (vPMCs) at a guest level provides detailed information that helps in improving the prediction accuracy and can be further used for resource optimization, consolidation and load balancing. Later, the research also targets the critical issue of optimal resource utilization in cloud computing. This study seeks a generic, robust but simple approach to deal with resource allocation in cloud computing and networking. The inappropriate scheduling in the cloud causes under- and over- utilization of resources which in turn increases the power consumption and also degrades the system performance. This work \ufb01rst addresses some of the major challenges related to task scheduling in heterogeneous systems. After a critical analysis of existing approaches, this thesis presents a rather simple scheduling scheme based on the combination of heuristic solutions. Improved resource utilization with reduced processing time can be achieved using the proposed energy-e\ufb03cient scheduling algorithm
Segment Routing: a Comprehensive Survey of Research Activities, Standardization Efforts and Implementation Results
Fixed and mobile telecom operators, enterprise network operators and cloud
providers strive to face the challenging demands coming from the evolution of
IP networks (e.g. huge bandwidth requirements, integration of billions of
devices and millions of services in the cloud). Proposed in the early 2010s,
Segment Routing (SR) architecture helps face these challenging demands, and it
is currently being adopted and deployed. SR architecture is based on the
concept of source routing and has interesting scalability properties, as it
dramatically reduces the amount of state information to be configured in the
core nodes to support complex services. SR architecture was first implemented
with the MPLS dataplane and then, quite recently, with the IPv6 dataplane
(SRv6). IPv6 SR architecture (SRv6) has been extended from the simple steering
of packets across nodes to a general network programming approach, making it
very suitable for use cases such as Service Function Chaining and Network
Function Virtualization. In this paper we present a tutorial and a
comprehensive survey on SR technology, analyzing standardization efforts,
patents, research activities and implementation results. We start with an
introduction on the motivations for Segment Routing and an overview of its
evolution and standardization. Then, we provide a tutorial on Segment Routing
technology, with a focus on the novel SRv6 solution. We discuss the
standardization efforts and the patents providing details on the most important
documents and mentioning other ongoing activities. We then thoroughly analyze
research activities according to a taxonomy. We have identified 8 main
categories during our analysis of the current state of play: Monitoring,
Traffic Engineering, Failure Recovery, Centrally Controlled Architectures, Path
Encoding, Network Programming, Performance Evaluation and Miscellaneous...Comment: SUBMITTED TO IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIAL
Protecting Private Data in the Cloud
Companies that process business critical and secret data are reluctant
to use utility and cloud computing for the risk that their data gets
stolen by rogue system administrators at the hosting company. We
describe a system organization that prevents host administrators from
directly accessing or installing eaves-dropping software on the
machine that holds the client's valuable data. Clients are monitored
via machine code probes that are inlined into the clients' programs at
runtime. The system enables the cloud provider to install and remove software
probes into the machine code without stopping the client's program, and
it prevents the provider from installing probes not granted by the
client
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