Docker vs VM for CPU-intensive workloads

Question

Considering only performance, which is best for CPU-intensive workloads between Docker and VM?

Once provisioned, this apps will be short lived in most cases so performance over stability is much more needed.

What is the best between Docker & VM(AWS EC2) to deploy this apps to maximize every available CPU?

When saying docker, what environment are you talking about? ECS / K8S? — gCoh, Sep 01 '20 at 08:55
A starting point might be this: [What is the runtime performance cost of a Docker container?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21889053/what-is-the-runtime-performance-cost-of-a-docker-container) and especially this [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/26068476/1561148) — tgogos, Sep 01 '20 at 09:01
Pods in k8s are usually set up with a small number of cores, and limited memory (500-1000Mi). Question is if your application will run faster with e.g. 12 cores and a lot of memory? — Roar S., Sep 01 '20 at 09:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 01 '20 at 09:02

In my opinion, you cannot reliably say which is better for CPU intensive workloads.

It's not slower than a VM normally, and might even be "faster" because startup is normally much faster than VM startup.

Also, I am no AWS expert but Docker containers on AWS also run on EC2 instances, so you have always a EC2 instance somewhere.

1 Answers1