VirtTorrent: BitTorrent for Inter-VM File Distribution

Abstract

A major problem in virtualized cloud datacenters today is the inefficiency of communication between virtual machines, i.e. inter-VM communication. Efforts have gone into optimizing communication between VMs present on the same physical server in the cloud, i.e. co-resident or co-located VMs; however, optimizing communication between VMs present on different physical servers is a separate issue. As these communicate via the TCP/IP network stack, improvements in performance or efficiency are normally proposed by customizations to the communication protocols requisite to the datacenter. We propose a mechanism to increase the average speed of inter-VM file distribution in the cloud for VMs on separate physical servers by implementing a BitTorrent-like peer-to-peer (P2P) system. The proposal, named VirtTorrent, uses direct communication between VMs in the cloud to implement a protocol similar to BitTorrent, allowing files to be distributed swiftly and with minimal network congestion. As inter-VM communication and network congestion are both important issues in the datacenter, we believe that VirtTorrent can make a marked improvement in the scenarios laid out in this paper.