3 ms·
Best i can tell, unikernels are a reaction to the shift from VMs to containers in cloud services. This by pairing down the content of a VM to the bare minimum.
by digi_owl 9y ago
Best i can tell, unikernels are a reaction to the shift from VMs to containers in cloud services. This by pairing down the content of a VM to the bare minimum.
Meaning that if you have a buffer overflow or similar, all you could access was what was in the VM (unless you also happen to pack a VM escape).
That said, i can't help think "DOS in a can" whenever i read about unikernels.
- perbu 9y agoIf it wasn't for the negative connotations people have with DOS I'd say it a lot more. Implementing a unikernel chain loader and a simple shell would be quite simple. That would be quite DOS-like. IncludeOS actually came out of a research need to stress-test hypervisors and run 10000 VMs on a single host. Since it is a clean slate system it has some different characteristics and those can be exploited in certain use cases and so people have kept on working on it.