Quantifying resource sharing, resource isolation and agility for web applications with virtual machines

by Miller, Elliot A.

Resource sharing between applications can significantly improve the resources required for all, which can reduce cost, and improve performance. Isolating resources on the other hand can also be beneficial as the failure or significant load on one application does not affect another. There is a delicate balance between resource sharing and resource isolation. Virtual machines may be a solution to this problem with the added benefit of being able to perform more dynamic load balancing, but this solution may be at a significant cost in performance. This thesis compares three different configurations for machines running application servers. It looks at speed at which a new application server can be started up, resource sharing and resource isolation between applications in an attempt to quantify the tradeoffs for each type of configuration. 1 This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0615079. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.