It isn’t really as if the operating system ceases to exist. More to the point, it ceases to be a separate entity from the compiled application. A unikernel, therefore, is an indivisible unit of computing logic. As a microservice, it carries the promise of unlimited scalability. And as a virtual machine, it is designed to run under the Xen Type 1 (hardware-level) hypervisor.
Source: Docker’s Unikernel Purchase and the Changing Role of the OS
linuxcontainers.org is the umbrella project behind LXC, LXD, LXCFS and CGManager.
The goal is to offer a distro and vendor neutral environment for the development of Linux container technologies.
Our main focus is system containers. That is, containers which offer an environment as close to possible as the one you’d get from a VM but without the overhead that comes with running a separate kernel and simulating all the hardware.
via Linux Containers.
What is Rocket?
Rocket is an alternative to the Docker runtime, designed for server environments with the most rigorous security and production requirements. Rocket is oriented around the App Container specification, a new set of simple and open specifications for a portable container format.
Docker, the company that backs the open source Docker container platform, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a $40 million Series C funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $66 million. Sequoia Capital led the investment along with existing investors Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jerry Yang.
via Cloud darling Docker gets $40M in funding to push its container technology — Tech News and Analysis.
So why should you bother with containers? For one simple reason: You can stick a lot more containers on a single server than you can VMs. How many more? Try two to three times more.
via Containers bring a skinny new world of virtualization to Linux | ITworld.
oVirt is an open source alternative to VMware vSphere, and provides an excellent KVM management interface for multi-node virtualization.
To find out more about features which were added in previous oVirt releases, check out the oVirt 3.3 release notes, oVirt 3.2 release notes and oVirt 3.1 release notes. For a general overview of oVirt, read the oVirt 3.0 feature guide and the about oVirt page.
Docker is an open-source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere.
Docker containers can encapsulate any payload, and will run consistently on and between virtually any server. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop will run at scale, in production*, on VMs, bare-metal servers, OpenStack clusters, public instances, or combinations of the above.
Common use cases for Docker include:
- Automating the packaging and deployment of applications
- Creation of lightweight, private PAAS environments
- Automated testing and continuous integration/deployment
- Deploying and scaling web apps, databases and backend services
Before Xen became part of the foundation, Kurth says, many people in the Linux community favored KVM. “The thinking really went along the lines of: KVM=Linux=Good. Xen=Citrix=Bad.” With the open source community connecting Xen with Citrix, the project’s features and open source nature were overlooked. Kurth says that Xen’s new role as a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project has changed how the community and press view it.
The sandboxing appliances popularly deployed today are performing well against your average”0-day” malware threat, but capabilities decline dramatically the more targeted an adversary becomes. As such, organizations are much better at stopping the generic non-targeted “Internet threats”, but becoming more vulnerable to marginally tuned malware. For example, any piece of malware that requires the user to perform an action at a specific time (before it acts maliciously) is sufficient to evade detection in most cases.
via The Increasing Failure Of Malware Sandboxing — Dark Reading.
The chief architect behind Netflix’s cloud and OSS strategy is Adrian Cockcroft, a former distinguished engineer at eBay and Sun, who says Netflix has many agendas in developing OSS. For one, it’s working to establish Netflix’s process as a best practice way of operating in the public cloud. Doing so allows the company to benefit from the knowledge of the broader open source community who recommend improvements. Furthermore, it helps Netflix hire and retain top engineering talent all while building up the company’s technology brand.
via Why Netflix is one of the most important cloud computing companies – Network World.