Impact of power consumption in containerized clouds: A comprehensive analysis of open-source power measurement tools

Recently, container-based solutions have become de facto compute units of modern cloud-native applications. However, the exponential growth in data traffic and the power consumption of these technologies to handle high data traffic alarm the strong need for energy evaluation approaches in containerized clouds. Furthermore, the proliferation of highly distributed edge clouds raises additional concerns regarding the power consumption of future cloud architectures. This article presents a detailed overview of methods and techniques for monitoring power consumption within popular cloud platforms. The study offers an in-depth evaluation of these approaches, demonstrating variations in measured power consumption based on the chosen technique. A well-known container orchestration platform named Kubernetes (K8s) has been applied in our extensive measurements. This work argues that energy-efficient container clouds will play a vital role in building a more sustainable and eco-friendly digital infrastructure by optimizing power consumption and reducing carbon footprint, paving the way for a greener future. The paper also discusses open challenges and future research directions on energy sustainability, leading to the conclusion, offering lessons learned and prospects on potential solutions to foster sustainable practices within the container ecosystem.