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VMStore: Distributed storage system for multiple virtual machines

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Abstract

Desktop virtualization is a very hot concept in both industry and academic communities. Since virtualized desktop system is based on multiple virtual machines (VM), it is necessary to design a distributed storage system to manage the VM images. In this paper, we design a distributed storage system, VMStore, by taking into account three important characteristics: high performance VM snapshot, booting optimization from multiple images and redundancy removal of images data. We adopt a direct index structure of blocks for VM snapshots to speed up VM booting performance significantly; provide a distribute storage structure with good bandwidth scalability by dynamically changing the number of storage nodes; and propose a data preprocessing strategy with intelligent object partitioning techniques, which would eliminate duplication more effectively. Performance analysis for VMStore focuses on two metrics: the speedup of VM booting and the overhead of de-duplication. Experimental results show the efficiency and effectiveness of VMStore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Services Computing Technology and System Lab, Cluster and Grid Computing Lab, School of Computer Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    XiaoFei Liao, He Li, Hai Jin, HaiXiang Hou, Yue Jiang & HaiKun Liu

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  1. XiaoFei Liao
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  2. He Li
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  3. Hai Jin
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  4. HaiXiang Hou
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  5. Yue Jiang
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  6. HaiKun Liu
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Correspondence to Hai Jin.

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Liao, X., Li, H., Jin, H. et al. VMStore: Distributed storage system for multiple virtual machines. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 54, 1104–1118 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-011-4273-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-011-4273-0

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