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More info on that would be cool. Something like Amazon's FireCracker?

by lykr0n 6y ago

colinchartier 6y ago
Sort of - FireCracker is less suited for testing use-cases because it still cold-boots. We use the same kernel features that let laptops resume when the lid is opened instead, they're less mature for production but much faster for staging and testing.
- lykr0n 6y ago
  Ah. VMware does something similar for hot provisioning VMs from a point in time memory snapshot. So you guys boot the image in the background, then capture a memory dump of it so you can quickly launch VMs from that snapshot? Or you boot the VMs the traditional way the first time, and then just suspend them when not in use?
  - colinchartier 6y ago
    We do even more, we take snapshots as the "Layerfile" runs - this basically lets you merge the memory dump semantics you mention with the interface of Docker. Also, we monitor which files are read by any step in the process, and let you skip setup chunks that don't need to run (i.e., installing libraries) without needing to micromanage what files you copy into the staging server.
    - lykr0n 6y ago
      Man that sounds cool. I don't have any use for something like that, but I would love to see it opensourced to play with it (which I assume you guys won't be doing anytime soon)
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  Are you using socket activation or something similar? I think there are really interesting use cases around that paradigm for packing services onto one host. Some blog posts I remember from when I was exploring this idea a few years ago: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/socket-activated-containers.html http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/socket-activated-containers... https://www.ctl.io/developers/blog/post/running-drupal-in-linux-containers-but-not-docker-on-pantheon https://www.ctl.io/developers/blog/post/running-drupal-in-li...
  - colinchartier 6y ago
    Sort of, you can think of it as an entire socket-activated OS. Our hypervisor does the logic though, we don't rely on the OS of the staging server itself for anything (think PXE)

More info on that would be cool. Something like Amazon's FireCracker?

by lykr0n 6y ago

More info on that would be cool. Something like Amazon's FireCracker?

Sort of - FireCracker is less suited for testing use-cases because it still cold-boots. We use the same kernel features that let laptops resume when the lid is opened instead, they're less mature for production but much faster for staging and testing.

lykr0n 6y ago
Ah. VMware does something similar for hot provisioning VMs from a point in time memory snapshot. So you guys boot the image in the background, then capture a memory dump of it so you can quickly launch VMs from that snapshot? Or you boot the VMs the traditional way the first time, and then just suspend them when not in use?
- colinchartier 6y ago
  We do even more, we take snapshots as the "Layerfile" runs - this basically lets you merge the memory dump semantics you mention with the interface of Docker. Also, we monitor which files are read by any step in the process, and let you skip setup chunks that don't need to run (i.e., installing libraries) without needing to micromanage what files you copy into the staging server.
  - lykr0n 6y ago
    Man that sounds cool. I don't have any use for something like that, but I would love to see it opensourced to play with it (which I assume you guys won't be doing anytime soon)
TechBro8615 6y ago
Are you using socket activation or something similar? I think there are really interesting use cases around that paradigm for packing services onto one host. Some blog posts I remember from when I was exploring this idea a few years ago: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/socket-activated-containers.html http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/socket-activated-containers... https://www.ctl.io/developers/blog/post/running-drupal-in-linux-containers-but-not-docker-on-pantheon https://www.ctl.io/developers/blog/post/running-drupal-in-li...
- colinchartier 6y ago
  Sort of, you can think of it as an entire socket-activated OS. Our hypervisor does the logic though, we don't rely on the OS of the staging server itself for anything (think PXE)