Container performance benchmark between Docker, LXD, Podman & Buildah

Abstract: Virtualization is a much-used technology by small and big companies alike as running several applications on the same server is a flexible and resource-saving measure. Containers which is another way of virtualizing has become a popular choice for companies in the past years seeing even more flexibility and use cases in continuous integration and continuous development.This study aims to explore how the different leading container solutions perform in relation to one another in a test scenario that replicates a continuous integration use case which is compiling a big project from source, in this case, Firefox.The tested containers are Docker, LXD, Podman, and Buildah which will have their CPU and RAM usage tested while also looking at the time to complete the compilation. The containers perform almost on par with bare-metal except Podman/Buildah that perform worse during compilation, falling a few minutes behind.