A Qualitative Cross-Comparison of Emerging Technologies for Software-Defined Systems

Software-Defined Systems are offering great opportunities for deploying programmable networks, as well as large-scale services distributed across clouds. Starting from the baseline principles of both Software-Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization, they embrace a number of novel enabling technologies (like containers, container orchestrators, and many other supporting tools) that significantly simplify the integration and the management of virtual components, while promising high level of flexibility, isolation, and performance. The major tech giants are drastically building their business on these technologies. However, many other companies are struggling in the selection of suitable platforms, tools, and any other software instruments allowing them to move forwards in this direction. Based on these premises, this paper provides a three-folded contribution. First, it explores the state of the art of container engines and container orchestrators. Second, it analyzes the main supporting tools that offer advanced and additional features to the resulting container networking. Third, it defines a set of qualitative Key Performance Indicators to carry out a preliminary comparison of the reviewed technologies. The proposed study aims at providing high-level guidelines and constructive comments to foster the widespread usage of Software-Defined Systems.