Lightweight VMs for serverless and containers
summary
Defines lightweight VMs as small, customizable guests with tiny footprints and fast boot, and shows concrete implementations: Firecracker (Rust, crosvm‑based, static binary) and QEMU microvm (microVM machine type, ~60 ms boot on Linux, ~3 ms on an OSv unikernel). Explains why dropping ACPI/PCI simplifies devices and speeds boot, demonstrates a QEMU microvm implementation, and surveys upcoming features like virtio‑mem hotplug, SEV memory encryption and Enarx HW TEEs. Results show tradeoffs: Firecracker minimizes footprint, QEMU provides more features and flexibility.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:23Classification
- 1:17Physical resources
- 2:44Lifecycle
- 3:15Traditional VMs
- 5:43BMS
- 7:56firecracker
- 9:51qmu
- 10:54firecracker vs qmu
- 11:32qmu vs firecracker
- 12:16qmu for containers
- 13:20qmu for telegram
- 14:41cockblock
- 16:47Trusted execution
- 17:14Be in the spirit
- 18:36Conclusions
- 20:00Questions
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