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Towards Coordinated Task Scheduling in Virtualized Systems

Authors:
Jérémy Fanguède
Alexander Spyridakis
Daniel Raho

Keywords: KVM/ARM, embedded virtualization, coordinated scheduling, embedded systems, task scheduling, CFS, BFS

Abstract:
Task scheduling is one of the key subsystems of an operating system. Generally, by providing fairness in terms of processor time allocated to tasks, the task scheduler can guarantee a low latency and high responsiveness to applications. In this paper, we demonstrate that some problems can occur in virtualized environments, in relation to standard task scheduler implementations and the way that tasks and virtual cores are scheduled. More precisely, there is a need to implement a communication channel between virtualized schedulers in the virtual machines and the host task scheduler, particularly when full-virtualization techniques are used, which could lead to latency issues and loss of responsiveness in virtual machines, especially when processors execute excessive workloads. After having analyzed the potential problems in virtual machines, experiments were done with real world and benchmarking applications. For testing, a Linux-based system and two different task schedulers were used, with a benchmark suite especially designed for virtualized environments where application responsiveness and latency can be measured. As an experimental platform, an ARM embedded system was used; this system is almost equivalent to general-purpose systems in terms of task scheduling.

Pages: 106 to 111

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: July 19, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4499

ISBN: 978-1-61208-419-0

Location: Nice,France

Dates: from July 19, 2015 to July 24, 2015