Performance analysis of microVMs and containers for edge computing: A focus on file and network I/O

Container virtualization has become an indispensable foundation for edge and fog computing. Containers offer several advantages, such as the support for scaling, the ability to replicate tasks, and reduced dependency. These advantages are especially crucial in the edge and fog environment. However, concerns over a relatively low level of security have followed container virtualization for some time. In response, microVM technology has emerged offering stronger isolation and security with performances comparable to containers. In this work, we provide a better understanding of microVM’s feasibility for edge and fog computing compared to containers. We conduct extensive experiments on diverse workloads to test how microVMs compare against containers in several aspects. Through rigorous measurements and analysis, we extract several important findings. Despite having a more complex architecture than containers, microVMs perform comparably to the containers in terms of I/O performance. MicroVMs can even outperform containers in certain I/O workload types by 58 %. Network I/O performance of microVMs can be 2$\times$ better than containers. We provide our findings and insights on the performance characteristics of microVMs on edge devices. With a much higher degree of isolation capability, microVMs can be an attractive virtualization technique for edge computing environments.