Network Question on Azure Container Instance

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Network Question on Azure Container Instance

Andy Wang 21

Hi,
I found that the network throughput between two container instances varies sometimes (both are separated containers running with different CPU).

I wonder if the network throughput is influenced by how busy the physical machine that they are running on.
Is it possible to tell whether two container instances are running on the same physical machine?

Thanks!

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SRIJIT-BOSE-MSFT 4,346 Microsoft Employee Moderator

anonymous user Wang-4727 , Thank you for your question.

I wonder if the network throughput is influenced by how busy the physical machine that they are running on.

Yes, the containers' network throughput is constrained by the network bandwidth of the underlying host. More information on expected network bandwidth can be browsed for different types of Azure VMs mentioned here.

Is it possible to tell whether two container instances are running on the same physical machine?

Azure Container Instances being a Container-as-a-Service offering, currently it is not possible to determine (as a customer) the physical machine on which a container group is running. As shared in the answer by @Cristian SPIRIDON , containers running in the same container group will be running on the same physical machine.

Also you can now deploy Azure Container Instances on dedicated hosts (although the underlying host will not be visible to you). "Dedicated" is an Azure Container Instances (ACI) sku that provides an isolated and dedicated compute environment for securely running containers. Using the dedicated sku results in each container group having a dedicated physical server in an Azure datacenter, ensuring full workload isolation to help meet your organization's security and compliance requirements.

The dedicated sku is appropriate for container workloads that require workload isolation from a physical server perspective.

For more information please check this document.

Hope this helps.

Please "Accept as Answer" if it helped, so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

Andy Wang 21 Reputation points

2021-08-03T20:01:37.31+00:00

Hi,
Thank you so much for the answer!
I wonder if the bandwidth to a single container is fixed, giving a type of Azure VM. Or it is bounded by the number of other containers running on the same underlying host. In other words, if I start two containers on separate machines, is it possible that one container has much better network performance than the other one (due to load difference between the underlying host. Thanks!
Runsheng Guo 1 Reputation point

2021-08-16T18:00:51.25+00:00

Hi @SRIJIT-BOSE-MSFT

I had the same question as Andy regarding whether the network performance varies depending on the load of other containers running on the VM; did you have any insight on that? Thanks.
SRIJIT-BOSE-MSFT 4,346 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2021-08-25T05:35:24.4+00:00

anonymous userWang-4727 @Runsheng Guo , Yes it is possible that the network performance might differ depending on the network traffic on the underlying host. At the time of writing there is no reserved network bandwidth for individual containers.

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Andy Wang 21 Reputation points

2021-08-03T20:01:37.31+00:00

Hi,
Thank you so much for the answer!
I wonder if the bandwidth to a single container is fixed, giving a type of Azure VM. Or it is bounded by the number of other containers running on the same underlying host. In other words, if I start two containers on separate machines, is it possible that one container has much better network performance than the other one (due to load difference between the underlying host. Thanks!
Runsheng Guo 1 Reputation point

2021-08-16T18:00:51.25+00:00

Hi @SRIJIT-BOSE-MSFT

I had the same question as Andy regarding whether the network performance varies depending on the load of other containers running on the VM; did you have any insight on that? Thanks.
SRIJIT-BOSE-MSFT 4,346 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2021-08-25T05:35:24.4+00:00

anonymous userWang-4727 @Runsheng Guo , Yes it is possible that the network performance might differ depending on the network traffic on the underlying host. At the time of writing there is no reserved network bandwidth for individual containers.

Answer 1

Cristian SPIRIDON 4,486 Volunteer Moderator

Hi,

I don't know a definitive answer to question 1 but if you want to run two containers on same host you have to use linux containers and container groups:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-instances/container-instances-container-groups

Hope this helps.

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Network Question on Azure Container Instance

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