Unikernels and Docker: From revolution to evolution

Richard Mortier and Anil Madhavapeddy demonstrate the integration of MirageOS, Rumprun unikernels, and the Docker container management toolchain, discuss the relationship between MirageOS (clean slate), Rumprun unikernels, and Linux Containers, and show how it is getting steadily easier to extend everyday workflows and deployments with unikernel technology.

Unikernels are a growing technology that augment existing virtual machine and container deployments with compact, single-purpose appliances. Two main flavors exist: clean-slate unikernels, which are often language specific, such as MirageOS (OCaml) and HaLVM (Haskell), and more evolutionary unikernels that leverage existing OS technology recreated in library form, notably Rump Kernel used to build Rumprun unikernels. To date, these have been something of a specialist’s game: promising technology that requires considerable effort and expertise to actually deploy. After a brief introduction for newcomers to unikernels, Richard Mortier and Anil Madhavapeddy demonstrate the great strides that have been taken recently to integrate unikernels with existing deployments. Specifically, Richard and Anil show various ways in which Rumprun and MirageOS unikernels can be used to deploy a LAMP stack, all managed using the popular Docker toolchain (Docker build, Docker run, and the Docker Hub). The result is unikernels that can be used to augment and evolve existing Linux container- and VM-based deployments, one microservice at a time. We no longer need a revolution—welcome to the evolution.