Free network measurement for adaptive virtualized distributed computing

An execution environment consisting of virtual machines (VMs) interconnected with a virtual overlay network can use the naturally occurring traffic of an existing, unmodified application running in the VMs to measure the underlying physical network. Based on these characterizations, and characterizations of the application´s own communication topology, the execution environment can optimize the execution of the application using application-independent means such as VM migration and overlay topology changes. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of such free automatic network measurement by fusing the Wren passive monitoring and analysis system with Virtuoso´s virtual networking system. We explain how Wren has been extended to support online analysis, and we explain how Virtuoso´s adaptation algorithms have been enhanced to use Wren´s physical network level information to choose VM-to-host mappings, overlay topology, and forwarding rules