5 ms·

> Unikernels have demonstrated enormous advantages over Linux in many important domains By domains, do they mean that as "actually in use in certain sectors in

> Unikernels have demonstrated enormous advantages over Linux in many important domains By domains, do they mean that as "actually in use in certain sectors in the industry" or "a prototype has shown that"? > causing some to propose that the days of Linux's dominance may be coming to an end Who exactly would make that claim? So, besides performance: what actual, real-life problems does this solve? I think there is some overlap with containers, and at this point, replacing them will require something a lot better.

FeepingCreature 6y ago
> Who exactly would make that claim? Didn't you hear? Some.
- toyg 6y ago
  Top men. Top. Men.
  - tomscieentalcru 6y ago
    Top guns it's almost scient-a-logical
microcolonel 6y ago
> So, besides performance: what actual, real-life problems does this solve? Well, don't go jumping to "besides performance". Dennard scaling is dead, and the things that can interrupt your program in a full preemptive kernel system are myriad. Furthermore, even if your application properly manages and produces backpressure, the OS can introduce buffering where you don't want it, often by necessity (to avoid massive context switch costs). Now, if you just want to manage backpressure over the network, an application-hosted networking stack is probably a fine solution, but if you want to accurately translate disk backpressure to network backpressure it gets more complicated. There are heaps and heaps of ordinary programs written for preemptive systems that would see noticeable, tangible benefits to users if they were run instead on unikernels; but the main thing halting adoption is the inconvenience of adapting programs. I tried getting Capstan/OSv to work the other day and the documentation dragged me through several apparently-outdated methods of achieving the same thing, all of which failed in incomprehensible ways. Tooling for these things could use a lot of work.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  So, a niche technology for a handful of HFT firms, betting platforms and hyper-scale cloud vendors. Those already use non-mainstream tech (eg LMAX disruptor) to achieve max performance. This is all nice and good, but the Unikernel guys claim since 20 years its the next big revolutionary thing. In the real world, the evolutionary approach using containers has turned out to solve the problems most people care about. Don’t get me wrong, this is fascinating stuff. But there is a difference between „changes mainstream computing“ and „cool tech to shave off another millisecond of latency“.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Unikernels could also be the next phase of cloud orchestration technologies. They would be truly lightweight VMs, and obviate the need for containers (collapse the VM orchestration and container orchestration layers into a single orchestration layer). This would offer better security and better performance without impacting developer/operator friendliness. And a side note about improved performance, in the cloud space, being able to boot in ten ms means you can start a VM in the scope of a single request, which means you can scale up dynamically without keeping a bunch of VMs running idle in the background just in case your traffic spikes. This is real, significant cost savings for cloud providers and customers.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      Debugging a single-executable container is quite unpleasant. I assume debugging unikernels or thin VMs (with a kernel and a single program) would be a similar experience.
      - zarkov99 6y ago
        Could you not do all your debugging and development on a normal host and only deploy on a unikernel when you are stable? There is already a divide between development and production with debug and release builds the later of which are a massive pain to debug.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arbarb 6y ago
Who exactly would make that claim? Will Serverless End the Dominance of Linux in the Cloud? https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3102980.3103008 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3102980.3103008
eyberg 6y ago
Security (general lack of user-land and in-ability to run more than one program), server density (run thousands of vms/box).
- digi-cat 6y ago
  https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blogs/2019/april/assessing-unikernel-security/ https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and-events/b...
- egh5oon 6y ago
  That does very little for security, if it's not a net negative at all. Most attacks aim at executing arbitrary code in the process space of the application being targeted. The lack of user-land does not help.

FeepingCreature 6y ago

> Who exactly would make that claim? Didn't you hear? Some.

toyg 6y ago
Top men. Top. Men.
- tomscieentalcru 6y ago
  Top guns it's almost scient-a-logical

microcolonel 6y ago

> So, besides performance: what actual, real-life problems does this solve? Well, don't go jumping to "besides performance". Dennard scaling is dead, and the things that can interrupt your program in a full preemptive kernel system are myriad. Furthermore, even if your application properly manages and produces backpressure, the OS can introduce buffering where you don't want it, often by necessity (to avoid massive context switch costs). Now, if you just want to manage backpressure over the network, an application-hosted networking stack is probably a fine solution, but if you want to accurately translate disk backpressure to network backpressure it gets more complicated. There are heaps and heaps of ordinary programs written for preemptive systems that would see noticeable, tangible benefits to users if they were run instead on unikernels; but the main thing halting adoption is the inconvenience of adapting programs. I tried getting Capstan/OSv to work the other day and the documentation dragged me through several apparently-outdated methods of achieving the same thing, all of which failed in incomprehensible ways. Tooling for these things could use a lot of work.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
So, a niche technology for a handful of HFT firms, betting platforms and hyper-scale cloud vendors. Those already use non-mainstream tech (eg LMAX disruptor) to achieve max performance. This is all nice and good, but the Unikernel guys claim since 20 years its the next big revolutionary thing. In the real world, the evolutionary approach using containers has turned out to solve the problems most people care about. Don’t get me wrong, this is fascinating stuff. But there is a difference between „changes mainstream computing“ and „cool tech to shave off another millisecond of latency“.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Unikernels could also be the next phase of cloud orchestration technologies. They would be truly lightweight VMs, and obviate the need for containers (collapse the VM orchestration and container orchestration layers into a single orchestration layer). This would offer better security and better performance without impacting developer/operator friendliness. And a side note about improved performance, in the cloud space, being able to boot in ten ms means you can start a VM in the scope of a single request, which means you can scale up dynamically without keeping a bunch of VMs running idle in the background just in case your traffic spikes. This is real, significant cost savings for cloud providers and customers.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Debugging a single-executable container is quite unpleasant. I assume debugging unikernels or thin VMs (with a kernel and a single program) would be a similar experience.
    - zarkov99 6y ago
      Could you not do all your debugging and development on a normal host and only deploy on a unikernel when you are stable? There is already a divide between development and production with debug and release builds the later of which are a massive pain to debug.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

arbarb 6y ago

Who exactly would make that claim? Will Serverless End the Dominance of Linux in the Cloud? https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3102980.3103008 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3102980.3103008

eyberg 6y ago

Security (general lack of user-land and in-ability to run more than one program), server density (run thousands of vms/box).

digi-cat 6y ago
https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blogs/2019/april/assessing-unikernel-security/ https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and-events/b...
egh5oon 6y ago
That does very little for security, if it's not a net negative at all. Most attacks aim at executing arbitrary code in the process space of the application being targeted. The lack of user-land does not help.