I did a test of 'Bare metal Linux' vs 'Containers on bare metal linux' for our product. In this case it is just 2 processes a 'search component' and an 'analytics and logging component'. Under heavy load the 'search' uses a lot of disk reads, CPU and network, while the logging module uses a lot of disk writes.

The comparison was done on

1) Ubuntu server 16.04 with both processes running as they usually do (Search with higher priority)

2) Core OS - Both processes running each in a separate rkt container (search with higher priority).

I saw no change in CPU / Network / Disk access metrics and my throughput remained the same.

Please note though, in my case I do not have way too many microservices as the general usage is. Also I use host networking. I also had no need for orchestration services like Kubernetes / swarm etc.,

TLDR:; No change between running product in container vs no-container mode with host networking, minimal containers and no orchestration.

Phoronix used to run some. Typically below 10% for disk heavy loads when KVM and virtio is used, bit more if not. I have no data on network heavy loads.

Generally containers vs VMs is a wash... except when considering security.

There used to be some issues with power saving in Xen that increased power use when idle, but have been fixed around 4.4 or so.

I would be interested in seeing VM hypervisors (Xen, QEMU etc) and also power consumption for rkt.