Optimizing virtual machine synchronization for application software

• US 8,990,829 B2
• Filed: 12/13/2013
• Issued: 03/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/10/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Dawson, Michael H., Quirk, Aaron J., Blythe, Christopher J., Hrischuk, Curtis E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Kawsar, Abdullah Al
• Application Number:
  US14/105,354
• Publication Number:
  US 20140101658A1
• Time in Patent Office: 466 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 718/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3419 by assessing time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3442 for planning or managing the needed capacity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual middleware or OS functionality using virtual machines to implement generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking G06F11/1484
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]

Abstract

Real-time application metrics of an application executed by a virtual machine are dynamically monitored by a controlling agent and analyzed to determine an optimal configuration of the virtual machine for executing the application. Based on the measured metrics, tunable parameters of the virtual machine may be adjusted to achieve desired application performance.

Claims

1. A method of optimizing performance of an application executed by a virtual machine, the virtual machine executed by a system that includes a plurality of processing units, the method comprising:

measuring, by a container application of the system that controls the virtual machine, at least a hardware metric of the system upon which the virtual machine is executed and a software metric of the application executed by the virtual machine; and

adjusting a tunable execution parameter of the virtual machine that optimizes execution of the application based on the measured hardware and software metric,

wherein the hardware metric and the software metric cannot be measured by the virtual machine and the tunable execution parameter is a parameter that is adjusted by the virtual machine, and

wherein the tunable execution parameter comprises an allocation of the plurality of processing units allocated to the virtual machine to which servicing of the application is restricted and a spin strategy for the application that controls spinning in locks used for synchronization within the virtual machine.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the adjusting comprises:

transmitting, by the container application, a request to the virtual machine to adjust the tunable execution parameter; and

adjusting, by the virtual machine, the tunable execution parameter in response to the transmitted request.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

restricting the virtual machine to an initial allocation of processing units and setting the spin strategy to an initial spin strategy,

wherein the measuring comprises measuring the metric of the virtual machine allocated the initial allocation of processing units and set to the initial spin strategy.

4. The method according to claim 1,

wherein the hardware metric comprises a utilization rate of processing units allocated to the virtual machine to which servicing of the application is restricted.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the adjusting comprises:

increasing the allocation of the plurality of processing units to which servicing of the virtual machine is restricted in response to measuring an increased utilization rate; and

decreasing the allocation of the plurality of processing units to which the servicing of the virtual machine is restricted in response to measuring a decreased utilization rate.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the software metric comprises at least one of a throughput of the application executed by the virtual machine and a response time of the application executed by the virtual machine, and

wherein the measuring comprises measuring the at least one of the throughput of the application executed by the virtual machine and the response time of the application executed by the virtual machine.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the spin strategy comprises disabling spinning while waiting for the synchronization lock to be freed or continuous spinning while waiting for the synchronization lock to be freed.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the measuring comprises intermittently measuring the metric over a period of time, and

wherein the adjusting comprises adjusting the tunable execution parameter, based on the intermittently measured metric.