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Microservice-Based Cloud Application Ported to Unikernels: Performance Comparison of Different Technologies

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Information Systems Architecture and Technology: Proceedings of 40th Anniversary International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology – ISAT 2019 (ISAT 2019)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1050))

Abstract

Microservice architecture is nowadays a popular design pattern for cloud applications. Usually microservices are launched on the servers of a cloud datacenter inside virtualization containers. This provides their isolation and performance comparable to virtual machines. However, security of virtualization containers remains a problem. They share the hosts machine operating kernel and thus their mutual isolations depends on proper implementation of kernel isolation features like cgroups or namespaces. Moreover the usage of kernel security modules like SELinux is hindered by different base Linux distributions used for containers creation. The concept of unikernels provides much better security for microservices. They are launched on a hypervisor instead of a full operating system kernel and contain only the base files needed to run the application. However their performance in realistic environments still remains a question. In this paper we port a microservice-based cloud application from Docker containers to Rumpkernel and OSv unikernels and analyse its performance. It is shown, that the performance of this unikernel-based port can match or exceed the more traditional approaches.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/dockersamples/example-voting-app.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun-packages/tree/master/redis.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv-apps/tree/master/redis-memonly.

  4. 4.

    https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/05/10/may-2019-web-server-survey.html.

  5. 5.

    https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun-packages/tree/master/nodejs.

  6. 6.

    https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv-apps/tree/master/node.

  7. 7.

    https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/programs/ab.html.

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun-packages/tree/master/python3.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv-apps/tree/master/python3x.

  10. 10.

    https://flask-restful.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Applied Informatics and Mathematics, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Nowoursynowska 166, 02–787, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz Jaworski, Waldemar Karwowski & Marian Rusek

Authors
  1. Janusz Jaworski
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  2. Waldemar Karwowski
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  3. Marian Rusek
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Waldemar Karwowski .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Leszek Borzemski

  2. Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Jerzy Świątek

  3. University of Applied Sciences in Nysa, Nysa, Poland

    Zofia Wilimowska

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Jaworski, J., Karwowski, W., Rusek, M. (2020). Microservice-Based Cloud Application Ported to Unikernels: Performance Comparison of Different Technologies. In: Borzemski, L., Świątek, J., Wilimowska, Z. (eds) Information Systems Architecture and Technology: Proceedings of 40th Anniversary International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology – ISAT 2019. ISAT 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1050. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30440-9_24

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