ZeroVM: Smaller, Lighter, Faster

I like this alternative to titling.<p>The original headline is preserved, and clarified by the editorial clarification in square brackets. It would be great for HN to adopt this as a solution to the modified headline problem, with the provisio that editorial comment must only be used for the purposes of clarification.

Van Lindberg here from Rackspace. If you have any questions, I am around to answer.

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but I would like to get to the point where I can make intelligent comparisons between technologies like CoreOS and ZeroVM, and in general better understanding of containerization, virtualization etc. Can someone suggest a list of books that can get me started on that path?

Based on &quot;Why ZeroVM?&quot; (<a href="http://zerovm.org/wiki/Why_ZeroVM" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zerovm.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Why_ZeroVM</a>), a large part of the motivation for ZeroVM is based on the premise that regular VMs require a full OS and are therefore unacceptably fat. However, there are multiple platforms for running unmodified applications directly on VMs without requiring a traditional OS, e.g. the work I&#x27;ve been involved with: <a href="https://github.com/anttikantee/rumpuser-xen/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anttikantee&#x2F;rumpuser-xen&#x2F;</a><p>Determinism, OTOH, sounds interesting at least on paper. Is there any experience from tests with real applications in real world scenarios?

Big congrats to Cam and the whole team! I work for one of the other companies from their TechStars class, they were a blast to have in San Antonio.

ZeroVM is LXC but with NaCl.

Huge congrats to the LiteStack team. I was in their TechStars class and those guys are super smart.

I&#x27;ve read the architecture doc (<a href="http://zerovm.org/wiki/Architecture" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zerovm.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Architecture</a>) and I loved it.<p>But, when you say tantalizing things like &#x27;erlang-on-c&#x27;, you raise the question: what does the clustering control plane look like?<p>One of the great things about erlang is that the cluster&#x27;s got supervisors that receive execution-level messages (e.g. &#x27;EXIT&#x27;) and can then take whatever action they feel like. Is that control plane level exposed to ordinary containers?<p>And the other great thing about erlang is that the messaging model is either synchronous if you care (with return receipts) or asynchronous if you don&#x27;t (fire and forget) -- and that richness turns out to have a bunch of good use cases. What&#x27;s the ZeroVM story there?<p>And the other great thing about erlang is being able to trace out messages, especially when your synchronous architecture just took a dump on the sheets and is staring at you belligerently. Does ZeroVM have introspection figured out yet?

How is does this solution compare to Google App Engine?

So... how do I use this with my Rails app, and to what end?<p>It looks like interesting technology, but I need a more concrete example.

why not just use docker.io? what are the differences between zerovm, docker, and warden?

Am I the only one here who finds this approach somehow similar to Plan 9?

I cannot see what this has to do with security. At the end of the day, it is the data that attackers are after and the app needs to be able to access it whether it is virtualised or not.

why not a different libc, such as musl?