Abstract
Containers as a lightweight technology to virtualise applications have recently been successful, particularly to manage applications in the cloud. Often, the management of clusters of containers becomes essential and the orchestration of the construction and deployment becomes a central problem. This emerging topic has been taken up by researchers, but there is currently no secondary study to consolidate this research. We aim to identify, taxonomically classify and systematically compare the existing research body on containers and their orchestration and specifically the application of this technology in the cloud. We have conducted a systematic mapping study of 46 selected studies. We classified and compared the selected studies based on a characterisation framework. This results in a discussion of agreed and emerging concerns in the container orchestration space, positioning it within the cloud context, but also moving it closer to current concerns in cloud platforms, microservices and continuous development.