Method and systems for external performance monitoring for virtualized environments

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide for performance monitoring of virtualized environments by establishing external performance monitoring (in a primary domain) of a virtual machine manager in whose context a virtual machine operates, and simultaneously capturing information on the virtual machine execution states. In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, the execution states may comprise any combination of a virtualized processor index, execution address, program (task) identifier, and a timestamp. In one embodiment, a primary domain performance monitoring component may initiate time- or event-based profiling of the virtual machine, and a hypervisor may report the virtualized execution states to the performance monitoring component upon reception of each profiling interrupt. Alternatively, the time-based profiling may be initiated in the virtual machine domain. In this case, the hypervisor or virtual machine manager may enable access from within the virtual machine to performance characteristics collected in the primary domain, or communicate the execution states to the external monitoring component upon reception of each profiling interrupt or upon a change in the virtualized execution states. Performance information collected in the primary domain may then be correlated with the execution states of the virtual machine.