Automated Modeling of I/O Performance and Interference Effects in Virtualized Storage Systems

Abstract-Modern IT systems frequently employ virtualization technology to maximize resource efficiency. By sharing physical resources, however, the virtualized storage used in such environments can quickly become a bottleneck. Performance modeling and evaluation techniques applied prior to system deployment help to avoid performance issues. In current practice, however, modeling I/O performance is usually avoided due to the increasing complexity of modern virtualized storage systems. In this paper, we present an automated modeling approach based on statistical regression techniques to analyze I/O performance and interference effects in the context of virtualized storage systems. We demonstrate our approach in three case studies creating performance models with two I/O benchmarks. The case studies are conducted in a real-world environment based on IBM System z and IBM DS8700 server hardware. Using our approach, we effectively create performance models with excellent prediction accuracy for both I/O-intensive applications and I/O performance interference effects with a mean prediction error up to 7%

Automated Modeling of I/O Performance and Interference Effects in Virtualized Storage Systems

Abstract-Modern IT systems frequently employ virtualization technology to maximize resource efficiency. By sharing physical resources, however, the virtualized storage used in such environments can quickly become a bottleneck. Performance modeling and evaluation techniques applied prior to system deployment help to avoid performance issues. In current practice, however, modeling I/O performance is usually avoided due to the increasing complexity of modern virtualized storage systems. In this paper, we present an automated modeling approach based on statistical regression techniques to analyze I/O performance and interference effects in the context of virtualized storage systems. We demonstrate our approach in three case studies creating performance models with two I/O benchmarks. The case studies are conducted in a real-world environment based on IBM System z and IBM DS8700 server hardware. Using our approach, we effectively create performance models with excellent prediction accuracy for both I/O-intensive applications and I/O performance interference effects with a mean prediction error up to 7%

Predictive performance modeling of virtualized storage systems using optimized statistical regression techniques

ABSTRACT Modern virtualized environments are key for reducing the operating costs of data centers. By enabling the sharing of physical resources, virtualization promises increased resource efficiency with decreased administration costs. With the increasing popularity of I/O-intensive applications, however, the virtualized storage used in such environments can quickly become a bottleneck and lead to performance and scalability issues. Performance modeling and evaluation techniques applied prior to system deployment help to avoid such issues. In current practice, however, virtualized storage and its performance-influencing factors are often neglected or treated as a black-box. In this paper, we present a measurement-based performance prediction approach for virtualized storage systems based on optimized statistical regression techniques. We first propose a general heuristic search algorithm to optimize the parameters of regression techniques. Then, we apply our optimization approach and create performance models using four regression techniques. Finally, we present an in-depth evaluation of our approach in a real-world representative environment based on IBM System z and IBM DS8700 server hardware. Using our optimized techniques, we effectively create performance models with less than 7% prediction error in the most typical scenario. Furthermore, our optimization approach reduces the prediction error by up to 74%

Modeling and Prediction of I/O Performance in Virtualized Environments

We present a novel performance modeling approach tailored to I/O performance prediction in virtualized environments. The main idea is to identify important performance-influencing factors and to develop storage-level I/O performance models. To increase the practical applicability of these models, we combine the low-level I/O performance models with high-level software architecture models. Our approach is validated in a variety of case studies in state-of-the-art, real-world environments