Quantifying the Performance of Cloud-Oriented Container Orchestrators on Emulated Tactical Networks

Kubernetes is the de facto industry standard for orchestrating containerized applications in clouds. Performance analyses of Kubernetes are often conducted in resource-rich environments on the enterprise or data center level. At the tactical edge domain, network resources are scarce and therefore at the opposite end of the spectrum when compared to resources available to enterprises or data centers. Computing resources (e.g., mobile or edge devices) are typically interconnected via wireless communications links that are characterized by limited bandwidth, low reliability, high latency, and frequent disconnections. This experience article describes lessons learned in constructing a suitable emulation environment for experimentation, and our findings and recommendations for running Kubernetes in tactical networks.