Strong Temporal Isolation Among Containers in OpenStack for NFV Services

In this article, the problem of temporal isolation among containerized software components running in shared cloud infrastructures is tackled, proposing an approach based on hierarchical real-time CPU scheduling. This allows for reserving a precise share of the available computing power for each container deployed in a multi-core server, so to provide it with a stable performance, independently from the load of other co-located containers. The proposed technique enables the use of reliable modeling techniques for end-to-end service chains that are effective in controlling the application-level performance. An implementation of the technique within the well-known OpenStack cloud orchestration software is presented, focusing on a use-case framed in the context of network function virtualization. The modified OpenStack is capable of leveraging the special real-time scheduling features made available in the underlying Linux operating system through a patch to the in-kernel process scheduler. The effectiveness of the technique is validated by gathering performance data from two applications running in a real test-bed with the mentioned modifications to OpenStack and the Linux kernel. A performance model is developed that tightly models the application behavior under a variety of conditions. Extensive experimentation shows that the proposed mechanism is successful in guaranteeing isolation of individual containerized activities on the platform.