kata-containers VS ignite

Seems like Fly.io Machines are trying reimplement Kata Containers with the Firecracker backend [0].

Kata has a guest image and guest agent to run multiple isolated containers [1].

[0] https://katacontainers.io/

[1] https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/blob/main...

> Last time I looked (a few months ago), the documentation was pretty sparse or outdated.

It still is, though it works somewhat seamlessly when installing with https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/blob/main...

Though only one of the hypervisors works well.

Better to use a secure VM, can even get container-like VMs with kata-containers

As I understand,Kata Containers

Kubernetes using Kata containers as a containerd backend

https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/blob/main...

My home k8s cluster is now "locked down" using micro-vms (kata-containers[0]), pod level firewalling (cilium[1]), permission-limited container users, and mostly immutable environments. Given how quickly I rolled this out; the tools to enhance cluster environment security seem more accessible now than my previous research a few years ago.

I know it's not exactly a production setup, but I really do feel that it's the most secure runtime environment I've ever had accessible at home. Probably more so than my desktops, which you could argue undermines most of my effort, but I like to think I'm pretty careful.

In the beginning I was very skeptical, but being able to just build a docker/OCI image and then manage its relationships with other services with "one pane of glass" that I can commit to git is so much simpler to me than my previous workflows. My previous setup involved messing with a bunch of tools like packer, cloud-init, terraform, ansible, libvirt, whatever firewall frontend was on the OS, and occasionally sshing in for anything not covered.

[0] https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers

I'm really impressed by fly.io, and the candidness with which they share some of their really awesome technology. Being container-first is the next step for PaaS IMO and they are ahead of the pack.

I aim to build a platform like theirs someday (probably not any time soon) but I don't think I'd do any of what they're doing -- it feels unnecessary. Bear with me as I recently learned that they use nomad[0] and some of these suggestions are kubernetes projects but I'd love to hear why the following technologies were decided against (if they were):

- kata-containers[1] (it does the whole container -> VM flow for you, automatically, nemu, firecracker) with multiple VMM options[2]

- linuxkit[3] (let's say you didn't go with kata-containers, this is another container->VM path)

- firecracker-containerd[4] (very minimal keep-your-container-but-run-it-as-a-VM)

- kubevirt[5] (if you just want to actually run VMs, regardless of how you built them)

- Ceph[6] for storage -- make LVM pools and just give them to Ceph, you'll get blocks, distributed filesystems (CephFS), and object gateways (S3/Swift) out of it (in the k8s space Rook manages this)

As an aside to all this, there's also LXD, which supports running "system" (user namespace isolated) containers, VMs (somewhat recent[7][8]), live migration via criu[9], management/migration of underlying filesystems, runs on LVM or zfs[10], it's basically all-in-one, but does fall behind in terms of ecosystem since everyone else is aboard the "cloud native"/"works-with-kubernetes" train.

I've basically how I plan to run a service like fly.io if I ever did -- so maybe my secret is out, but I sure would like to know just how much of this fly.io got built on (if any of it), and/or what was turned down.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26745514

[1]: https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers

[2]: https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/blob/2fc7...

[3]: https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit

[4]: https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker-container...

[5]: https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt

[6]: https://docs.ceph.com/

[7]: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/running-virtual-machin...

[8]: https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/6205

[9]: https://criu.org/Main_Page

[10]: https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/docs/master/storage

Kata Containers https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers

Not a drop-in replacement: the OCI image entry point is not automatically executed. https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/issues/874 (issue opened in 2021).

Resource usage. Running a full VM to execute only two processes is a big waste of the limited resources of my server (8GB RAM, Celeron processor). I searched and I found something to limit the resource usage and minimize the attack surface of the guest OS: Weave Ignite/Firecracker/MicroVMs.

root@kubefire:~# kubefire install INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:13Z] downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/innobead/kubefire/v0.3.8/scripts/install-prerequisites.sh to save /root/.kubefire/bin/v0.3.8/install-prerequisites.sh force=false version=v0.3.8 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] running script (install-prerequisites.sh) version=v0.3.8 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] running /root/.kubefire/bin/v0.3.8/install-prerequisites.sh version=v0.3.8 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + TMP_DIR=/tmp/kubefire INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] ++ go env GOARCH INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] ++ echo amd64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + GOARCH=amd64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + KUBEFIRE_VERSION=v0.3.8 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + CONTAINERD_VERSION=v1.6.6 + IGNITE_VERION=v0.10.0 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + CNI_VERSION=v1.1.1 + RUNC_VERSION=v1.1.3 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + '[' -z v0.3.8 ']' + '[' -z v1.6.6 ']' + '[' -z v0.10.0 ']' + '[' -z v1.1.1 ']' + '[' -z v1.1.3 ']' INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] ++ sed -E 's/(v[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)[a-zA-Z0-9\-]*/\1/g' INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] +++ echo v0.3.8 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + STABLE_KUBEFIRE_VERSION=v0.3.8 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + rm -rf /tmp/kubefire INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + mkdir -p /tmp/kubefire INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + pushd /tmp/kubefire /tmp/kubefire /root INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + trap cleanup EXIT ERR INT TERM INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + check_virtualization + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + grep aarch64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + return 1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + lscpu INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + grep 'Virtuali[s|z]ation' INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] Virtualization: VT-x Virtualization type: full INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + lsmod INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + grep kvm INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] kvm_intel 372736 0 kvm 1028096 1 kvm_intel INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + install_runc + _check_version /usr/local/bin/runc -version v1.1.3 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + set +o pipefail + local exec_name=/usr/local/bin/runc + local exec_version_cmd=-version + local version=v1.1.3 + command -v /usr/local/bin/runc + return 1 + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + grep aarch64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + return 1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + curl -sfSL https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/releases/download/v1.1.3/runc.amd64 -o runc INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + chmod +x runc INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + sudo mv runc /usr/local/bin/ INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + install_containerd + _check_version /usr/local/bin/containerd --version v1.6.6 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + set +o pipefail + local exec_name=/usr/local/bin/containerd + local exec_version_cmd=--version + local version=v1.6.6 + command -v /usr/local/bin/containerd + return 1 + local version=1.6.6 + local dir=containerd-1.6.6 + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + grep aarch64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + return 1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:14Z] + curl -sfSLO https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/download/v1.6.6/containerd-1.6.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:15Z] + mkdir -p containerd-1.6.6 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:15Z] + tar -zxvf containerd-1.6.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz -C containerd-1.6.6 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:15Z] bin/ bin/containerd-shim INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:15Z] bin/containerd INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:16Z] bin/containerd-shim-runc-v1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:16Z] bin/containerd-stress INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:16Z] bin/containerd-shim-runc-v2 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:16Z] bin/ctr INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + chmod +x containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-shim containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-shim-runc-v1 containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-shim-runc-v2 containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-stress containerd-1.6.6/bin/ctr INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo mv containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-shim containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-shim-runc-v1 containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-shim-runc-v2 containerd-1.6.6/bin/containerd-stress containerd-1.6.6/bin/ctr /usr/local/bin/ INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + curl -sfSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/containerd/containerd/v1.6.6/containerd.service INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo groupadd containerd INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo mv containerd.service /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] ++ command -v chgrp INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] ++ tr -d '\n' INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + chgrp_path=/usr/bin/chgrp INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo sed -i -E 's#(ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/containerd)#\1\nExecStartPost=/usr/bin/chgrp containerd /run/containerd/containerd.sock#g' /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo mkdir -p /etc/containerd INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + containerd config default INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + sudo systemctl enable --now containerd INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/containerd.service → /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service. INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + install_cni + _check_version /opt/cni/bin/bridge --version v1.1.1 + set +o pipefail INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + local exec_name=/opt/cni/bin/bridge + local exec_version_cmd=--version + local version=v1.1.1 + command -v /opt/cni/bin/bridge INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + return 1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + mkdir -p /opt/cni/bin INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + local f=https://github.com/containernetworking/plugins/releases/download/v1.1.1/cni-plugins-linux-amd64-v1.1.1.tgz + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + grep aarch64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + return 1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + curl -sfSL https://github.com/containernetworking/plugins/releases/download/v1.1.1/cni-plugins-linux-amd64-v1.1.1.tgz INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:17Z] + tar -C /opt/cni/bin -xz INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + install_cni_patches + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + grep aarch64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + return 1 + curl -o host-local-rev -sfSL https://github.com/innobead/kubefire/releases/download/v0.3.8/host-local-rev-linux-amd64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + chmod +x host-local-rev INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + sudo mv host-local-rev /opt/cni/bin/ INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + install_ignite + _check_version /usr/local/bin/ignite version v0.10.0 + set +o pipefail INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + local exec_name=/usr/local/bin/ignite + local exec_version_cmd=version + local version=v0.10.0 + command -v /usr/local/bin/ignite + return 1 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + for binary in ignite ignited + echo 'Installing ignite...' INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] Installing ignite... INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + local f=https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/releases/download/v0.10.0/ignite-amd64 + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + grep aarch64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:19Z] + return 1 + curl -sfSLo ignite https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/releases/download/v0.10.0/ignite-amd64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:20Z] + chmod +x ignite INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:20Z] + sudo mv ignite /usr/local/bin INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:20Z] + for binary in ignite ignited + echo 'Installing ignited...' Installing ignited... + local f=https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/releases/download/v0.10.0/ignited-amd64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:20Z] + _is_arm_arch INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:20Z] + grep aarch64 + uname -m INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:20Z] + return 1 + curl -sfSLo ignited https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/releases/download/v0.10.0/ignited-amd64 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + chmod +x ignited INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + sudo mv ignited /usr/local/bin INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + check_ignite + ignite version INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] Ignite version: version.Info{Major:"0", Minor:"10", GitVersion:"v0.10.0", GitCommit:"4540abeb9ba6daba32a72ef2b799095c71ebacb0", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2021-07-19T20:52:59Z", GoVersion:"go1.16.3", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64", SandboxImage:version.Image{Name:"weaveworks/ignite", Tag:"v0.10.0", Delimeter:":"}, KernelImage:version.Image{Name:"weaveworks/ignite-kernel", Tag:"5.10.51", Delimeter:":"}} INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] Firecracker version: v0.22.4 INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + create_cni_default_config INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + mkdir -p /etc/cni/net.d/ INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + sudo cat INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + popd /root + cleanup INFO[2022-11-11T11:46:21Z] + rm -rf /tmp/kubefire

> If it's not hard to name a thing that Firecracker makes difficult for a serverside workload, could you... name one?

I already did that with live migration. But ok.

Encrypted storage: https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/issues/65...: WONTFIX

The answer given is appropriate for firecracker use cases but insufficient otherwise. I'm not anti-firecracker; it's the right choice for many things. Just not all things.

The sort of VM I want orchestrated has encrypted (by contract) multi-pathed network block devices to encrypted storage volumes. 3-10 per tenant. This is trivial for a full-featured kernel; multi-path just works, encryption just works.

VLAN: https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/issues/810: Open. Maybe one day.

Again, trivial for a full-featured Linux kernel.

I think you're missing the point. It's not about what hypothetical thing firecracker can or can't do. It's about elevating VM orchestration to some degree of parity with what has been created for container orchestration. These VMs and their complex storage and networking requirements should be modeled as we model containers now; through an orchestration system that makes management easy and as foolproof as possible. The fact that firecracker isn't sufficient to be the Micro-VM of choice for this isn't relevant.