Section: New Software and Platforms

PUMA

Puma: pooling unused memory in virtual machines

Keywords: Virtualization - Operating system - Distributed systems - Linux kernel

Functional Description: PUMA is a system that is based on a kernel-level remote caching mechanism that provides the ability to pool VMs memory at the scale of a data center. An important property while lending memory to another VM, is the ability to quickly retrieve memory in case of need. Our approach aims at lending memory only for clean cache pages: in case of need, the VM which lent the memory can retrieve it easily. We use the system page cache to store remote pages such that: (i) if local processes allocate memory the borrowed memory can be retrieved immediately, and (ii) if they need cache the remote pages have a lower priority than the local ones.

• Participants: Maxime Lorrillere, Julien Sopena and Pierre Sens

• Partner: LIP6

• Contact: Julien Sopena

• Publications: Conception et évaluation d'un système de cache réparti adapté aux environnements virtualisés - Puma: pooling unused memory in virtual machines for I/O intensive applications

• URL: https://github.com/mlorrillere/puma