With HyperContainer, we make the performance/overhead of virtualized container similar to linux container --- 130ms launch time, and sharing the read-only part of memory (kernel and init). As a result, we can use it as a more secure container.
Can you summarize how you're doing this, e.g. the similarities and differences from Linux containers?
Interesting. I'll look into this further. Thank you for the insight.
Re:Hyper Is Docker Done the Right Way
by beyondmeasures on Friday November 04, 2016 @03:18PM
(#12875164)
Agree with teilo here; pragmatically speaking we run into size of images needed for each container as well (think windows down the road); ease of use is there certainly but at scale cost in future...
What overhead?
Re:Hyper Is Docker Done the Right Way
by TickleSteve on Friday November 04, 2016 @12:34PM
(#12873833)
The benefit of a container over a full VM is meant to be that the container scheme has just one kernel running.
This scheme would effectively be just one container per VM, thus negating the benefit.
(Edit: So.. it would appear that the benefit is that they're read-only-sharing the kernel between VMs)
Re:Hyper Is Docker Done the Right Way
by mrmrcoleman on Friday November 04, 2016 @12:42PM
(#12873892)
That is the traditional thinking indeed, but not all VMs are born equal. Check out the underlying tech here: https://docs.hypercontainer.io/
In terms of a public cloud service, you (customer) don't care. You pay for the amount of memory you used, whether there is one kernel, or many of them, is irrelevant.
It is absolutely relevant: If your container is running its own kernel, then it is consuming memory for that kernel, not to mention the CPU overhead of the hosted kernel. Additionally, every container must also boot a complete OS. More overhead. This is why traditional containers use a shared kernel with process group isolation. You pay for what you use. A traditional container only uses what it needs for the app itself, and it starts in a fraction of the time because it doesn't have to boot anything. Performance and cost may be acceptable regardless, but that's not the point. Containers are more efficient.
Based upon responses from Hyper, they appear to address these concerns in a manner I have never heard before. I will certainly be looking into their core technology.
The value proposition of Hyper is that the overhead of guest kernel is greatly reduced to the point of being insignificant if you run any significant apps inside HyperContainers, meanwhile you gain the benefit of kernel isolation and ditching VM cluster management altogether.
They dont boot a "complete OS", they boot the kernel and a process - that is it, not your systemd which brings in Firefox kind of "complete OS".
But you don't own the server, thus you don't pay for the overhead (if any).
I'm sorry, but you don't know what you are talking about. You pay for what you use. I don't own Amazon's servers either, but I pay for every bit of memory and CPU time that my EC2 instances use, and that includes the memory and CPU time consumed by my instance's kernel.
If every container is running its own kernel on a hypervisor, doesn't this eliminate one of the key benefits of a true Container system, the kernel/memory overhead?