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Wait, so is this HyperContainer thing, like... a virtual machine?
by matzipan 11y ago
Wait, so is this HyperContainer thing, like... a virtual machine?
- gnawux 11y agoyep, the containers are encapsulated by hyper container
- helixone 11y agoIs hypercontainer another name for an Intel Clear Container?
- gnepzhao 11y agoNo, very similar conceptually, but totally different implementations.
- smartbit 11y agoPlease tell us more, how does hyper_ compare to Clear Containers [0], funded by Intel? And VMware Photon Platform (of which the hypervisor is closed source)? Both of these state they have very fast startup times and allow for large number of virtual containers per host. Those are the three Hypervisor Containers I'm aware of and would like to understand the differences in implementation. Benchmarking the three would be even better, but I guess we won't see those for some time. [0] https://clearlinux.org/features/clear-containers https://clearlinux.org/features/clear-containers
- gnepzhao 11y agoBasically it uses a hypervisor to launch your docker image, but not a full blown VM, since there is no guest OS, like ubuntu or coreos in the VM. There is only one tiny kernel in the HyperContainer to run your Docker app.
- jclulow 11y agoSo there _is_ still a guest OS inside a hardware virtual machine, it's just a stripped down OS?
- gnepzhao 11y agoDepend on how one define OS. If kernel=OS, then yes, it is stripped down one. But HyperContainer is different from container OS, like coreos, that it is just a kernel, no rootfs.
- jclulow 11y agoYes, even if it's "just a kernel", it's still an operating system. It's a piece of software that runs in the supervisor mode of the CPU, providing system call services to user applications. The marketing copy appears, on this basis, to be somewhat misleading. It says on the site that this is a cloud where "multi-tenant containers can inherently be run safely side by side on bare metal, instead of being nested in VMs". I think that, as an industry, we've established that "bare metal" execution of workloads means _without_ the multi-layered approach of a hypervisor (itself an OS) running a separate guest OS kernel.
- gnepzhao 11y agoThanks. I remember a blog post that coined a term "virtualized container", but cannot find the link right now. I wouldn't use the word VM, as it reminds us of the heavy full-blown images. It is probably more misleading to say that HyperContainer launches your Docker image in VMs. But you are right, it is still new and requires efforts to get people understand.
- Pyxl101 11y agoI don't know if I would describe VMs as heavy. But to the extent that they are heavy, it's because they are an application and OS running on virtualized (i.e. partially or fully emulated) hardware rather than physical hardware. [Edit: Removed rest of comment to limit negativity. Thank you for responding to clarify.]