Patent ID: 8661438

Claim:
A virtualization planning system configured to model performance of a proposed allocation of virtual machines among a set of target computer systems running one or more virtualization technologies, wherein the virtualization technologies consume a portion of processing resources of the target computer systems as overhead, said virtualization planning system comprising: a database stored on a computer-readable medium comprising data for a plurality of overhead profiles, wherein each profile is based on a configuration of a given target computer system and one of a plurality of virtualization technologies that divide resources of the given target computer system into multiple execution environments, and wherein each profile is based on measurements of the overhead experienced by the given target computer system under a variety of operating conditions; and a performance modeling engine, coupled to the database, configured to estimate an overhead consumed by the virtualization technologies for the proposed allocation of virtual machines based on an overhead profile selected from the database and determine at least one performance measure of the set of target computer systems based on the estimated overhead.