Skip to main content

Efficient Live Migration of Linux Containers

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11203))

Abstract

In recent years, operating system level virtualization has grown in popularity due to its capability to isolate multiple userspace environments and to allow for their co-existence within a single OS kernel instance. Checkpoint-restore in Userspace (CRIU) is a tool that allows to live migrate a hierarchy of processes – a container – between two physical computers. However, the live migration may cause significant delays when the applications running inside a container modify large amounts of memory faster than a container can be transferred over the network to a remote host. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for live migration of containers to address this issue by utilizing a recently published CRIU feature, the so-called “image cache/proxy”. This feature allows for better total migration time and down time of the container applications that are migrated by avoiding the use of secondary storage.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.nginx.com/.

  2. 2.

    https://redis.io/.

References

  1. Memory changes tracking - CRIU documentation. https://criu.org/Memory_changes_tracking

  2. Userfaultfd - CRIU documentation. https://criu.org/Userfaultfd

  3. CRIU - Checkpoint/Restore in User Space, October 2016. https://access.redhat.com/articles

  4. CRIU (2018). https://criu.org/

  5. CRIU disk-less migration (2018). https://criu.org/Disk-less_migration

  6. Docker, July 2018. https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/checkpoint/

  7. Lxd, July 2018. https://github.com/lxc/lxd

  8. Bruno, R., Ferreira, P.: ALMA: GC-assisted JVM live migration for java server applications. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Middleware Conference, p. 5. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Clark, C., et al.: Live migration of virtual machines. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation-Volume 2, pp. 273–286. USENIX Association (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Documentation, O.: Checkpointing and live migration (2018). https://wiki.openvz.org/Checkpointing_and_live_migration

  11. Emelyanov, P.: System and method for joining containers running on multiple nodes of a cluster. https://patents.google.com/patent/US9621643

  12. Emelyanov, P.: Ability to monitor task memory changes, April 2013. https://lwn.net/Articles/546966/

  13. Emelyanov, P.: Soft-Dirty PTEs - Linux Kernel Documentation, April 2013. https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/soft-dirty.txt

  14. Hacking, S., Hudzia, B.: Improving the live migration process of large enterprise applications. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Virtualization Technologies in Distributed Computing, pp. 51–58. ACM (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hines, M.R., Deshpande, U., Gopalan, K.: Post-copy live migration of virtual machines. ACM SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 43(3), 14–26 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Laadan, O., Nieh, J.: Transparent checkpoint-restart of multiple processes on commodity operating systems. In: 2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference on Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, ATC 2007, pp. 25:1–25:14. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2007). http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1364385.1364410

  17. Lei, Z., Sun, E., Chen, S., Wu, J., Shen, W.: A novel hybrid-copy algorithm for live migration of virtual machine. Future Internet 9(3), 37 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Milojičić, D.S., Douglis, F., Paindaveine, Y., Wheeler, R., Zhou, S.: Process migration. ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR) 32(3), 241–299 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Reber, A.: Combining pre-copy and post-copy migration, October 2016. https://lisas.de/~adrian/posts/2016-Oct-14-combining-pre-copy-and-post-copy-migration.html

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin J. Kollingbaum .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Stoyanov, R., Kollingbaum, M.J. (2018). Efficient Live Migration of Linux Containers. In: Yokota, R., Weiland, M., Shalf, J., Alam, S. (eds) High Performance Computing. ISC High Performance 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11203. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02465-9_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02465-9_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02464-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02465-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics