Energy Consumption in Microservices Architectures: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Cloud computing is a paradigm that delivers technology resources on demand through service virtualization. Virtualization allows sharing of hardware by applications compartmentalized into multiple independent modules. Microservices architecture uses the ability of virtualization to adopt a software architecture approach based on building applications composed of several interdependent and loosely coupled modules. However, microservices architectures can incur large energy costs to achieve the required levels of performance and availability. Several research topics related to energy consumption in microservice architectures have already been explored, such as elasticity, reliability, performance, and availability. However, given the variety of problems and solutions, identifying research trends and gaps related to microservices is complex. We aim to systematically identify, rank, and compare existing research trends and gaps around energy consumption in microservices. This paper presents a systematic review of energy consumption in microservices architectures. This work also provides a list of references to find the mapped works, thus being able to guide searches more safely. paper selection started with 3625 papers, followed by three refinement processes in which 37 papers were selected for a full review. The remaining 37 papers were cataloged and classified according to some criteria, such as metrics, evaluation method and type of architecture. Thus, the review revealed research gaps and trends in energy consumption in microservices architectures. In addition, significant research challenges and directions were identified. The research challenges are presented based on the metrics that guide each work in this systematic review: performance, elasticity, scalability, reliability, sustainability, and availability.