A study on application container resource efficiency

Abstract

Nowadays, the IT service environment develops in a dynamic, rapid, and unpredictable way. Microservices andapplication containers in this process have a significant impact on new generation IT service models. The fact that theyhave important capabilities such as modelability, presentability as service, and restructurability, are reasons for preferringthem in many areas. Moreover, microservices can meet various needs of IT personnel. As it is known, all server systemcomponents, such as CPU, network, hard-drive I/O, affect energy consumption. At this point, microservices also play animportant mediator role in resource management. Energy consumption of microservice-based applications is lower thanthat of the traditional approaches. However, there are still cases of recoverable and unnecessary consumption at somepoints. Microservices can be monitored and controlled using many methods. Thus, this provides us with opportunities torecover the wasted energy resources considerably. In this article, the effects of container-based microservice architectureson the energy consumption of the system and how to reduce these effects are presented. For this purpose, a methodology,which has 3 approaches (disconnect, pause, stop), and a tracing mechanism are proposed. The results show that thismethodology has a considerable effect on energy efficiency.