Patent ID: 8769534

Claim:
A method for determining CPU utilization of a physical hardware component hosting a plurality of virtual machines in a cloud data center, the method comprising: executing a bursting application on a first virtual machine of the plurality of virtual machines hosted on the physical hardware component comprising a hypervisor and physical resources, wherein the execution of the bursting application requests for an amount of available physical resources of the physical hardware component that causes the first virtual machine to substantially exceed its pre-allocated amount of physical resources; monitoring the execution of the bursting application on the first virtual machine by the hypervisor for processing interruptions from other virtual machines, wherein the processing interruptions temporarily occupy a portion of the physical resources being consumed by the bursting application on the first virtual machine; and determining the CPU utilization of the physical hardware component based on the monitored processing interruptions incurred over a pre-determined period of time, wherein determining the CPU utilization further comprises: querying the hypervisor for an amount of CPU cycles used by the bursting application; determining an elapsed time corresponding to the execution of the bursting application; and subtracting the amount of CPU cycles used by the bursting application from the elapsed time.