Analysis of Memory Ballooning Technique for Dynamic Memory Management of Virtual Machines (VMs)

摘要

Memory ballooning is dynamic memory management technique for virtual machines(VMs). Ballooning is a part of memory reclamation technique operations used bya hypervisor to allow the physical host system to retrieve unused memory fromcertain guest virtual machines (VMs) and share it with others. Memoryballooning allows the total amount ofRAM required by guest VMs to exceed theamount ofphysical RAM available on the host. Memory overcommitment enables ahigher consolidation ratio in a hypervisor. Using memory overcommitment, userscan consolidate VMs on a physical machine such that physical resources areutilized in an optimal manner while delivering good performance. Hence memoryreclamation is an integral component ofmemory overcommitment. In this paper, weaddress that the basic cause of memory that ballooning is memory overcommitmentfrom using memory-intensive virtual machines. We compared to others reclamationtechnique and identify Cost Associate with Memory Ballooning in state of MemoryOvercommitment. The objective of this paper is to analyse memory ballooningtechnique for dynamic memory management of VMs. For this analysis, VMware basedvirtualization software e.g ESXi Server, vCenter Server, vSphere Client areinstalled and configured on the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CIT) Lab,DIU; for monitor and analyze VM performance for memory ballooning technique.The performance ofmemory ballooning technique is evaluated with two differenttest cases. The purpose is to help users understand, how this technique impactthe performance. Finally, we presents the throughput ofheavy workload withdifferent memory limits when using ballooning or swapping; and analyse VMperformance issue for this technique.