QoS and performance metrics for container-based virtualization in cloud environments

Current cloud deployments heavily depend on hypervisor-based virtualizations. The overarching characteristics of Docker and containerization have given them a momentum in their widespread adoption recently as alternatives for their counterparts. However, little research has been done for comparing the QoS of both technologies, thus leaving the domain without widely accepted performance metrics. Aiming at informing the decision of the best fit in a specific cloud deployment, we have designed performance metrics that compare the performance of both designs in an in-house cluster deployed by using OpenStack. We focus on well-established representatives as baselines, including KVM from the hypervisor-based side, LXD from the container-based side in addition to Docker. Our results show that containerization is not a predominant fit-all solution that can always replace hypervisors for all cluster deployment and application scenarios. It can instead be thought of as a complementary solution to use for specific application scenarios that are constrained with conditions that are solved by containerization merits.

[1]  Young-Woo Kim,et al.  The Virtualization and Performance Comparison with LXC-LXD in ARM64bit Server , 2016, 2016 6th International Conference on IT Convergence and Security (ICITCS).

[2]  Maria Kihl,et al.  Performance Overhead Comparison between Hypervisor and Container Based Virtualization , 2017, 2017 IEEE 31st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA).

[3]  Adriano Vogel,et al.  An Intra-Cloud Networking Performance Evaluation on CloudStack Environment , 2017, 2017 25th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-based Processing (PDP).

[4]  W. Marsden I and J , 2012 .

[5]  Nathan Regola,et al.  Recommendations for Virtualization Technologies in High Performance Computing , 2010, 2010 IEEE Second International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.

[6]  Huiqun Yu,et al.  A Novel Resource Scheduling Approach in Container Based Clouds , 2014, 2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering.

[7]  Dharmesh Kakadia,et al.  Virtualization vs Containerization to Support PaaS , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering.

[8]  David Bernstein,et al.  Containers and Cloud: From LXC to Docker to Kubernetes , 2014, IEEE Cloud Computing.

[9]  Nogal Memari,et al.  Towards virtual honeynet based on LXC virtualization , 2014, 2014 IEEE REGION 10 SYMPOSIUM.

[10]  Benoit des Ligneris,et al.  Virtualization of Linux based computers: the Linux-VServer project , 2005, 19th International Symposium on High Performance Computing Systems and Applications (HPCS'05).

[11]  Andrian Rakhmatsyah,et al.  Performance analysis of container-based hadoop cluster: OpenVZ and LXC , 2016, 2016 4th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICoICT).

[12]  Antonio Iera,et al.  Evaluating Performance of Containerized IoT Services for Clustered Devices at the Network Edge , 2017, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[13]  Dac-Nhuong Le,et al.  Performance Analysis of Network Virtualization in Cloud Computing Infrastructures on OpenStack , 2016 .

[14]  Roberto Morabito,et al.  A performance evaluation of container technologies on Internet of Things devices , 2016, 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS).

[15]  Nitin Naik,et al.  Migrating from Virtualization to Dockerization in the Cloud: Simulation and Evaluation of Distributed Systems , 2016, 2016 IEEE 10th International Symposium on the Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented and Cloud-Based Environments (MESOCA).