The Role of Container Technology in Reproducible Computer Systems Research

Abstract

Evaluating experimental results in the field of com- puter systems is a challenging task, mainly due to the many changes in software and hardware that computational environ- ments go through. In this position paper, we analyze salient features of container technology that, if leveraged correctly, can help reduce the complexity of reproducing experiments in systems research. We present a use case in the area of distributed storage systems to illustrate the extensions that we envision, mainly in terms of container management infrastructure. We also discuss the benefits and limitations of using containers as a way of reproducing research in other areas of experimental systems research.

Publication
First Workshop on Containers (WoC 2015) (Workshop co-located with IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering - IC2E 2015)