Slides from ContainerDays Boston 2016 by Scott Weiss on Project UniK, the Unikernel complation and deployment platform

1. Unikernels made Simple

2. EMC-Advanced-Dev
www.github.com/emc-advanced-dev
Idit Levine
CTO of Cloud Platform
Team, EMC
@idit_levine
Scott Weiss
Software Engineer,
EMC
@ilackarms
Yuval Kohavi
Software Engineer,
EMC
@ilackarms

3. You will need
• Virtualbox
• Docker
• Git

4. If you haven’t already…

5. If you haven’t already…
• Make sure docker is running and…

6. Be Warned…
Unikernels are a controversial topic
This talk will challenge some prevailing notions
about Containers and Linux
Containers
Unikernels

7. Some people have
strong feelings about this topic

8. Revolutionary technology
always creates controversy

9. So..
What are Unikernels?

10. Unikernels: an Introduction

11. What are Unikernels?
• Cross-compile existing
applications into secure,
lightweight machine images
• Boot virtual machines or
bare-metal directly from a
Unikernel – the OS is ‘baked in’
• The application is the kernel

12. Unikernels
• Single address space, single-process operating
system
• No virtual memory
• No context switching
• No usermode/kernelmode

13. No Underlying OS
means Lightweight

14. Single Address Space
means Fast

15. Single-Process
means Secure

16. “Immutable Infrastructure”
.. Is finally realized with Unikernels!
Don’t provision servers -- Compile them!

17. Overall
• No underlying OS means fewer layers
• Which means less complexity
• We think that’s a good thing!

18. Drawbacks & Criticisms
• Debugging isn’t easy
• Unikernels are platform-specific
• Unikernels can’t fork()
• Difficulty of use

19. When SHOULDN’T you use a Unikernel?
When your application is a Monolith

20. Down to Business
What is UniK?
A tool to make building, running, and debugging unikernels easy!

21. Drawbacks & Criticisms
• Debugging isn’t easy
• Unikernels are platform-specific
• Unikernels can’t fork()
• Difficulty of use
Opportunities for Innovation

22. Debugging
• Bake GDB Debugger into image
• Capture Application Stdout/Stderr (logs)

23. Debugging…
And remember…
Smaller stack
Means less to debug

24. Drawbacks & Criticisms
• Debugging isn’t easy
• Unikernels are platform-specific
• Unikernels can’t fork()
• Difficulty of use
Opportunities for Innovation
(not perfect, but we’ve got a start)

25. Cross-Platform
UniK cross-compiles!
The same app, any infrastructure
Supported infrastructures:
vSphere, Virtualbox, Xen, QEMU
More coming soon! (Openstack, GCE, KVM)

26. Drawbacks & Criticisms
• Debugging isn’t easy
• Unikernels are platform-specific
• Unikernels can’t fork()
• Difficulty of use
Opportunities for Innovation
(not perfect, but we’ve got a start)
UniK does the
heavy lifting

27. fork()
Still no fork

28. UniK is easy to use
With a Docker-Like CLI

29. UniK is easy to use
comprehensive documentation

30. UniK is easy to use
all backed by a RESTful API

31. Drawbacks & Criticisms
• Debugging isn’t easy
• Unikernels are platform-specific
• Unikernels can’t fork()
• Difficulty of use
Opportunities for Innovation
(not perfect, but we’ve got a start)
UniK does the
heavy lifting

32. So get out your laptops
Let’s build us some unikernels!