Simulating Resilient Server using XEN Virtualization

Since servers play a critical role in data processing and data transmission for serving many clients, failures in servers cause not only performance degradation of the server itself but also threats to all the computers connected to the server. Resilient servers that can self-recognize failures, self-repair failures and self-replace failed parts are required when computer systems and networks become such huge-scale as witnessed by data centers and the cloud computing. As a preliminary study, we report simulations restricting ourselves to demonstrate the self-repair network (SRN) model in a homogeneous environment realized by a virtualization technique. Simulations are conducted using native and hosted VMM on a single physical computer. Three scenarios: hang faulty, DoS attack and virus infection, are simulated. These simulations demonstrated how a server with a homogeneous environment (realized by the self-repair network model using the virtualization technique) can or cannot keep the resilience, and even suggested a possibility and necessity of using a self-reconfiguration model to create diversity. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.