Performance of Cluster-based High Availability Database in Cloud Containers

Database is an important component in any software application, which enables efficient data management. High availability of databases is critical for an uninterruptible service offered by the application. Virtualization has been a dominant technology behind providing highly available solutions in the cloud including database, where database servers are provisioned and dynamically scaled based on demands. However, containerization technology has gained popularity in recent years because of light-weight and portability, and the technology has seen increased number of enterprises embracing containers as an alternative to heavier and resource-consuming virtual machines for deploying applications and services. A relatively new cluster-based synchronous multi-master database solution has gained popularity recently and has seen increased adoption against the traditional master-slave replication for better data consistency and high availability. This article evaluates the performance of a cluster-based high availability database deployed in containers and compares it to the one deployed in virtual machines. A popular cloud software platform, OpenStack, is used for virtual machines. Docker is used for containers as it is the most popular container technology at the moment. Results show better performance by HA Galera cluster database setup using Docker containers in most of the Sysbench benchmark tests compared to a similar setup using OpenStack virtual machines.