A Functional and Performance Benchmark of Lightweight Virtualization Platforms for Edge Computing

The recent rise of edge computing and FaaS triggered a revolution in the field of software virtualization, improving performance and security. This paper benchmarks various lightweight virtualization platforms, such as microVMs and containers, in the context of edge microservices. Factors taken into account include toolchain maturity, networking capabilities, boot time, resource use, microservice performance, and ARM architecture readiness. We present a functional comparison and benchmarks on both a Raspberry Pi 4 and an x86-64 platform. The results indicate standard Docker containers offer reliable performance and low memory use, while microVM-based solutions such as Firecracker are more isolated. Moreover, OSv unikernels have extremely low boot times and significantly better performance than Docker containers. Finally, while gVisor offers improved security and excellent compatibility, its performance is only 10% of default Docker performance.

Automated summary

The rise of edge computing and FaaS has revolutionized software virtualization, improving performance and security. This paper benchmarks lightweight virtualization platforms, such as microVMs and containers, in the context of edge microservices. The results show that standard Docker containers have reliable performance and low memory usage, microVM-based solutions provide better isolation, OSv unikernels have extremely low boot times and significantly better performance than Docker containers, and gVisor offers improved security and compatibility but lower performance compared to Docker.