Evaluating the Performance of Containerized Webservers against web servers on Virtual Machines using Bombardment and Siege

Abstract

Containerization is becoming an increasingly common aspect of DevOps. Adding a container layer increases the complexity and could impact system performance. This study explores the performance differences of the Apache and Nginx web servers on Virtual Machines (VMs) and Docker Containers with official web server images from Docker Hub. A sandbox environment was created with both containerized and non-containerized versions of the web servers, and their performance was analyzed using line graphs. The results showed differences in performance between VMs and Docker Containers, with some variation from previous research due to the virtualization being done locally rather than on the cloud. This study would be advantageous for organizations with on-premises infrastructure due to security or governing regulations.