GPU, USB, NICs and Other Physical Devices in Your Containers

The very definition of a container is that it's a set of processes, or in this case full operating system which is sharing the kernel with the host machine. This opens a full array of possibilities a …

The very definition of a container is that it’s a set of processes, or in this case full operating system which is sharing the kernel with the host machine. This opens a full array of possibilities as far as what can be shared between host and container. This talk will be covering some of the most common use cases, such as sharing one or multiple GPUs with a container for compute use, accessing USB devices or physical network interfaces. Then go into slightly weirder cases of kernel device passthrough and see what can be done in such containers. Outside of the obvious GPU compute use case, device passthrough can also be used to consolidate a number of distinct, mostly idle or old machines into just a single one, including any custom hardware that they may have attached to them and with very little hassle. Working on Android apps and need to build a CI platform driving a large number of phones, USB passthrough can make this very easy for you too. LXD will be used as the container manager as it makes all of this rather easy as part of its goal to offer a VM-like environment but built on top of Linux containers.