Evaluating High Availability and Performance in Containerized Linux Environments to Address the Shortcomings of Traditional Virtual Machines

Abstract

In the pursuit of a robust and efficient computing infrastructure, system resilience and operational efficiency have become indispensable. Conventionally, virtual machines (VMs) have been the cornerstone of infrastructure deployment but are often hampered by significant resource overhead, scalability constraints, and extended failover durations. With the evolution from VMs to containerized environments, this study aims to evaluate the enhancements in availability and performance that containerized Linux environments provide over their traditional counterparts. As modern IT infrastructures necessitate unprecedented system availability and performance levels, traditional VMs often falter due to excessive resource needs, flexibility issues, and delayed recovery periods. Containerization, with its lightweight nature and microservice-friendly architecture, offers a potential remedy to these challenges. Employing an empirical approach, this study examines container technologies, including Docker and Kubernetes, across various Linux distributions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as failover times, CPU and Memory utilization, scalability, network latency, I/O throughput, etc., serve as evaluation criteria, which provide a comparative analysis against VMs. The findings reveal that containerized environments significantly outperform VMs in terms of rapid scalability, improved fault tolerance, and more efficient resource utilization, thereby enhancing overall system performance. The implications of these findings suggest a pivot for both practitioners and researchers in technology infrastructure operations to consider containerized frameworks. This study improves the current understanding by elucidating the benefits of container technologies compared with conventional virtualization methods. This study underscores the need for continued research to refine container technologies, potentially unlocking further advancements in high availability and performance.