Faster .NET docker images in Azure

In 2021 I wrote a post 9% faster ASP.NET with a custom docker image where I tested if another base docker image could affect performance. It could.

However, I only tested locally in Windows Docker, probably not the environment that the docker images would use in production.

TLDR: I got the same result between the default Debian 11 and Clear Linux, the latter was 2.9% faster compared to 2.6% in the previous local test.

I used the same method from the previous post with the alterations below.

I built two new docker images, with the Crank.Agent installed, based on:

• The default docker image for .NET SDK 6.0, running Debian 11
• Clear Linux with .NET SDK 6.0 manually installed

I did not bother to test the older .NET images, I assumed the results would be the same as the local test after testing the newest image. Upgrading to latest .NET will probably yield higher results than changing the base image.

My images were uploaded to an Azure Container Registry and an Azure App Service was created and switched it between my two docker images in Deployment Center. The App Service was running on a B3 Linux App Service Plan which was running a 5.4.0-1074-azure Linux kernel on a Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8272CL CPU @ 2.60GHz CPU

I executed the same https plaintext scenario as previously, initiating it from my local machine and stored the results in a local SQL.

This time around, I started the Crank Agent on port 80, instead of the default, and I modified the local scenario to run against my App Service.

The throughput was of course lower than running it locally, because of the lower amount of resources on the App Service Plan. It was only around a tenth of the performance, which approximately matches the higher CPU performance my 8 core laptop can deliver. It is probably also worth noticing that running Linux container on Windows with WSL locally doesn't result in a huge overhead, compared to Linux containers on Linux in Azure. A test on the same hardware is of course required to get the exact number.

The results, as scientific as they can be, running in an virtualized environment with noisy neighbors etc.: