What's the minimum overhead of a Linux container?

Question

If I understand this correctly, a container, once running, shouldn't have any CPU overhead. Is that correct?

It does have a memory overhead. How big might that be? How would I measure it?

Answer 1

I'm running an LXC now. With top open lxc-ps doesn't even show up on the list so it seems that doesn't have any overhead. I wouldn't call myself an expert in LXCs but I would hesitate to say that there is literally no overhead. I typically see the phrase "near bare metal performance" in describing LXC so while the overhead is negligible it does exist.