Towards a performance characterization of a parallel file system over virtualized environments

This research work investigates the performance impact of virtualizing parallel file systems´ (PFS) environments. Through an extensive experimental analysis, using three distinct computing platforms and considering 11 factors with relevant impact on systems´ performance, we demonstrate how PFSs´ write throughput is affected by network and disk contentions on virtualized environments. Results indicate that on extreme cases, in which the whole PFS environment executes over a single host, performance losses of up to 93% are observed when the number of I/O and computing nodes increases. On a PFS´s environment deployed over Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure, where it is expected a more balanced resource sharing, network contention proved more critical causing performance losses of up to 80% with the increase of the number of I/O nodes. Disk contention in this environment, however, was not an issue, behaving more like an environment deployed over a dedicated cluster.