Virtual Machine Based Energy-Efficient Data Center Architecture for Cloud Computing: A Performance Perspective

Virtual machine technology is widely applied to modern data center for cloud computing as a key technology to realize energy-efficient operation of servers. Server consolidation achieves energy efficiency by enabling multiple instantiations of operating systems (OSes) to run simultaneously on a single physical machine. While, live migration of virtual machine can transfer the virtual machine workload from one physical machine to another without interrupting service. However, both the two technologies have their own performance overheads. There is a tradeoff between the performance and energy efficiency. In this paper, we study the energy efficiency from the performance perspective. Firstly, we present a virtual machine based energy-efficient data center architecture for cloud computing. Then we investigate the potential performance overheads caused by server consolidation and live migration of virtual machine technology. Experimental results show that both the two technologies can effectively implement energy-saving goals with little performance overheads. Efficient consolidation and migration strategies can improve the energy efficiency.