Kata Containers is an open source project and community working to build a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that feel and perform like containers, but provide the workload isolation and security advantages of VMs.
Kata Containers runtime uses a hypervisor to provide isolation when spawning containers. It creates lightweight VMs and puts containers inside.
In Kata, each container runs its own kernel instead of sharing the host system’s kernel with the host and other containers using cgroups. By extension, each container also gets its own I/O, memory access, and other low-level resources, without having to share them.
Kata containers can also take advantage of security features provided by hardware-level virtualization (meaning virtualization that is built into CPUs and made available using VT extensions).
Key Features
- Seamlessly plugs to existing container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. While you are launching VMs, native Kubernetes features, such as auto-scaling or rolling updates are still available. This allows to combine the benefits of using virtualization technology and container orchestration capabilities.
- Avoids the heavy resource consumption that comes with traditional virtualization.
Website: katacontainers.io
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Kata Containers
License: Apache-2.0 License
Kata Containers is written in Go and Rust. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Containers | |
|---|---|
| Docker | Create, deploy, and run applications by using containers |
| LXC | Userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features |
| containerd | Industry-standard container runtime |
| Apptainer | Optimized for compute focused enterprise and HPC workloads |
| Kata Containers | Uses a hypervisor to provide isolation when spawning containers |
| OpenVz | Container-based virtualization |
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