Performance Overhead of ERP Systems in Paravirtualized Environments

abstract

Virtualization is a big trend in current IT world and is used intensively in today's computing centres. But little is known about what happens to the performance of computer systems when running in virtual environments. This work focuses on the performance aspect especially in the field of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP). Therefore, this work utilizes a quantitative approach by using laboratory experiments to measure the performance differences between a virtualized and non-virtualized ERP system. First, on basis of a literature review a performance measurement framework will be developed to provide a comprehensive guideline how to measure the performance of an ERP system in a virtualized environment. Second, the performance measurement focuses on the overhead in CPU, memory and I/O intensive situations. Third, the focus lays on a root cause analysis. Gained results will be analyzed and interpreted to give recommendations for further development of both ERP system and virtualization solution. The outcome may be useful for further computing centre design when introducing new ERP systems and service delivery concepts like Software as a Service (SaaS) in a virtualized or non-virtualized environment.