Time Provisioning Evaluation of KVM, Docker and Unikernels in a Cloud Platform

Unikernels are a promising alternative for application deployment in cloud platforms. They comprise a very small footprint, providing better deployment agility and portability among virtualization platforms. Similar to Linux containers, they are a lightweight alternative for deploying distributed applications based on microservices. However, the comparison of unikernels with other virtualization options regarding the concurrent provisioning of instances, as in the case of microservices-based applications, is still lacking. This paper provides an evaluation of KVM (Virtual Machines), Docker (Containers), and OSv (Unikernel), when provisioning multiple instances concurrently in an OpenStack cloud platform. We confirmed that OSv outperforms the other options and also identified opportunities for optimization.