Unikernels, Meet Docker! Containing Unikernels

Unikernels are a burgeoning technology, ripe for deployment in a range of situations, from cloud-hosted microservices to Internet-of-Things platforms. By compiling and linking only the required code, they offer a range of benefits over traditional OS-hosted deployments, notably efficiency and, through smaller attack surfaces, security. While increasing in maturity, to date they have remained something of a technologists' choice: technically compelling but requiring considerable effort to build, deploy and use.

To address this, some in the community have spent time trying to integrate unikernel management with the popular Docker container management stack. By enabling unikernels to be managed using the standard Docker command line tools, we bring all the ease-of-use and common understandings of that toolchain to bear on this exciting technology.

After giving some context to the challenges faced, we will demonstrate building and running a simple LAMP-like stack using Docker to build and manage Rumprun andMirageOS Unikernels.