LXD

[Joe Topjian]

From Canonical's latest newsletter:

http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/tools/lxd

This is slightly different than a Docker solution/competitor as Canonical is focusing on the entire Operating System in a container rather than executing a single binary.

We're using containers in a couple of different places at Cybera, so I'm very keen to try this out -- especially the OpenStack driver. 

However, I still cringe a little when I see comments like this: 

"In the cloud, you are getting subdivided machines without getting sub-par performance."

As I've mentioned before, that overhead is something like 3-5% of the bare metal resources nowadays. IMO, that's negligible.

For me, the benefits are the ability to access hardware directly rather than through a virtual interface (GPUs, for example). Underlying filesystem technologies like ZFS and deduplication also make running containers much more efficient. Finally, being able to access the containerized instance through a normal POSIX filesystem is a bonus.

The major downside of containers, though, is the shared kernel. At the moment, I'm not comfortable running containers in a multi-tenant environment due to that aspect. Having someone I don't know share the same kernel as my own containers is very risky.

Thanks,

Joe

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Joe Topjian

Systems Architect

Cybera Inc.

www.cybera.ca

Cybera is a not-for-profit organization that works to spur and support innovation, for the economic benefit of Alberta, through the use of cyberinfrastructure.