Word of the Day: AWS Firecracker

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms | August 2, 2019 AWS Firecracker Firecracker is a light-weight virtualization technology that has been open-sourced by Amazon Web Services. Developers can use Firecracker to create and operate micro virtual machines (micro VMs) that host multi-tenant containers and run in conjunction with AWS serverless technologies. Firecracker allows developers to combine the efficiency and high performance of containers with the security and isolation of traditional VMs and hardware-based virtualization. Firecracker also implements a virtual machine monitor (VMM).   As of this writing, Firecracker cannot be used with Kubernetes, Docker or Kata containers, but AWS says it does have plans to extend Firecracker to other major container ecosystems. Firecracker specifications Firecracker is written in the Rust programming language and can currently run on Intel processors, with AMD and ARM processor support expected in 2019. Firecracker is available under the Apache version 2.0 open source license. Firecracker uses the KVM hypervisor architecture for Linux. AWS developed the virtualization technology with minimal elements to increase boot speeds, reduce attack surface and maximize server utilization. To further optimize performance, a user is only able to boot recent Linux kernels, and Firecracker doesn't support graphics, accelerators or most legacy devices. In addition, each micro VM created with Firecracker has a memory overhead of less than 5 MiB, which enables a higher density of isolated containers that can run on a single server. A user can launch micro VMs in as little as 125 milliseconds, and create as many as 150 micro VMs per second per host, according to AWS. Firecracker and serverless AWS open sourced Firecracker, which it already used internally to improve resource utilization and user experience for services such as AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate. With Fargate, for example, Firecracker accelerates the deployment of Fargate Tasks. Previously, those Tasks would consist of one or multiple Docker containers that run inside an Amazon EC2 VM to remain isolated. Now, Fargate Tasks can run on Firecracker micro VMs, which enables faster provisioning times on EC2 bare metal instances. Quote of the Day "As micro VM technology achieves more attention and broader adoption, it's plausible to see more native integration support for AWS Firecracker." - Stephen J. Bigelow Trending Terms micro VM kernel-based VM AWS Lambda AWS Fargate Docker Kubernetes Learning Center Are there tools or platforms that support AWS Firecracker? AWS Firecracker provides a few tools, such as firectl, to help ease deployment, but admins might be disappointed by the lack of key tool integrations, such as Kubernetes and Docker. But as micro VM technology continues to gain traction, admins might not have to wait much longer. Assess the micro VM market with AWS Firecracker Micro VMs offer similar benefits to containers: They're quick and lightweight, but they're still VMs. Assess how AWS Firecracker stacks up against the competition of micro VMs and container systems before launching this open source virtualization product. Use AWS Firecracker to build micro VMs for containerized apps AWS' Firecracker can create micro VMs and support a wide range of serverless projects. Learn how to use the open source project to get the benefits of virtualization and containers. How do I obtain, deploy and update AWS Firecracker? Understanding AWS Firecracker protocols for obtaining, deploying and running the software is vital to its performance. Learn more about where to find the latest updates and supporting software. AWS Firecracker microVMs provide isolation and agility AWS Firecracker uses a Linux KVM hypervisor to deploy lightweight VMs for multi-tenant container workloads. Take advantage of VM isolation and security in addition to container agility and performance with Firecracker microVMs. Quiz Yourself We use Amazon S3 to ________ local storage. A. complement B. supplement Answer Stay in Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed! FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2018 TechTarget. All rights reserved.