Comparative Performance Study of Lightweight Hypervisors Used in Container Environment

Guoqing Li, Keichi Takahashi, Kohei Ichikawa, Hajimu Iida, Pree Thiengburanathum, Passakorn Phannachitta

2021

Abstract

Virtual Machines (VMs) are used extensively in cloud computing. The underlying hypervisor allows hardware resources to be split into multiple virtual units which enhances resource utilization. However, VMs with traditional architecture introduce heavy overhead and reduce application performance. Containers have been introduced to overcome this drawback, yet such a solution raises security concerns due to poor isolation. Lightweight hypervisors have been leveraged to strike a balance between performance and isolation. However, there has been no comprehensive performance comparison among them. To identify the best fit use case, we investigate the performance characteristics of Docker container, Kata containers, gVisor, Firecracker and QEMU/KVM by measuring the performance on disk storage, main memory, CPU, network, system call and startup time. In addition, we evaluate their performance of running Nginx web server and MySQL database management system. We use QEMU/KVM as an example of traditional VM, Docker as the standard container and the rest as the representatives of lightweight hypervisors. We compare and analyze the benchmarking results, discuss the possible implications, explain the trade-off each organization made and elaborate on the pros and cons of each architecture.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Li G., Takahashi K., Ichikawa K., Iida H., Thiengburanathum P. and Phannachitta P. (2021). Comparative Performance Study of Lightweight Hypervisors Used in Container Environment. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - Volume 1: CLOSER, ISBN 978-989-758-510-4, pages 215-223. DOI: 10.5220/0010440502150223

in Bibtex Style

@conference{closer21,
author={Guoqing Li and Keichi Takahashi and Kohei Ichikawa and Hajimu Iida and Pree Thiengburanathum and Passakorn Phannachitta},
title={Comparative Performance Study of Lightweight Hypervisors Used in Container Environment},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - Volume 1: CLOSER,},
year={2021},
pages={215-223},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010440502150223},
isbn={978-989-758-510-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - Volume 1: CLOSER,
TI - Comparative Performance Study of Lightweight Hypervisors Used in Container Environment
SN - 978-989-758-510-4
AU - Li G.
AU - Takahashi K.
AU - Ichikawa K.
AU - Iida H.
AU - Thiengburanathum P.
AU - Phannachitta P.
PY - 2021
SP - 215
EP - 223
DO - 10.5220/0010440502150223