In the digital era, critical sectors like banking, ISPs, and cloud-based services depend on robust, secure networks to ensure uninterrupted service availability. Key operations such as financial transactions, customer support, and online services rely on high system uptime, essential for business continuity and customer trust. Network and server administrators play a vital role in maintaining high availability (HA) for systems like file servers, web servers, database servers, backup systems, and enterprise applications. HA infrastructures often use multiple servers working collaboratively to ensure continuous service. If one server fails, another takes over seamlessly, preventing significant disruptions. Virtualization technology enhances HA systems by hosting services on virtual machines (VMs) that can migrate between physical nodes within a cluster. This ensures uninterrupted service even during hardware failures. This paper examines the use of open-source tools for managing HA services, focusing on cost efficiency and system optimization. The Heartbeat program facilitates real-time VM migration across cluster nodes, maintaining service continuity. To improve this process, the Perf+ algorithm is introduced. Perf+ optimizes CPU performance, reduces memory usage, and minimizes downtime by transferring fewer bytes of modified memory pages during migration, reducing CPU and network load. The proposed solution is implemented in an experimental HA system to evaluate the performance of real-time VM migrations. The research analyzes the impact of these migrations on system efficiency, aiming to advance HA infrastructures in virtualized environments through optimized resource utilization and reduced operational interruptions.
Keywords: KVM, full-virtualization, high availability, open source, virtualization
