With Ops, NanoVMs Seeks to Make Unikernels More Accessible

Unikernels as an operational model of application delivery has been around for many years. A fixed purpose os/image that contains only what service or application needs to run and does not have many advantages. Although similar to containers, Unikernel has discrete that they do not share anything with any other application or service, not even the OS kernel itself. Although they regularly keep running as VMs, they have a very small internal footprint compared to say, a typical Linux VM. Only the absolute minimum when it comes to the OS kernel and other binaries or files is included in a unikernel which results in an extremely fast loading and Response time compared to a specific VM or container. The application's setting and response times are limited to only the disk and network they use.

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With Ops, NanoVMs Seeks to Make Unikernels More Accessible

Along with the supposed performance benefits of unikernels, betters' security comes from architecture. Due to the small code base, unikernels has a much smaller attack area than a general operating system. The lack of a shell means that an attacker would have to use the machine code as an attack vector, which is much more difficult. Likewise, the fact that unikernels are unchanging means that even if an attacker manages to make some changes to the image, they will be lost when it is redeployed.

Barriers to Adoption

Considering all the advantages inherent in unikernels, one can expect that they will be widely used in business applications and be prepared take-over containers and/or VMs in terms of deployment numbers. Until now, this has not been the case, but why? It turns out that unikernels is actually quite difficult to implement and also very difficult to handle at scale. The main barrier to entry is that you must have the knowledge and experience of Kernel developers to effectively manage unikernels.

Even for a seasoned developer, this can be a daunting task, much less an operational professional who is less focused on building applications than effectively monitoring, maintaining and scaling an application they have been entrusted with. So despite the many benefits of running an application or service in a unikernel, many companies have hesitated to adopt them because of the steep learning curve.

A New Approach

To bridge this gap, NanoVM, a leader in the unikernel space, has released its Open Source Ops tool. Ops creates a cover around KVM and QEMU that allows developers to load an ELF binary into a Nanos unikernel, the unikernel maintained and developed by NanoVMs

With this release, NanoVM's unikernel expects to become more accessible to the developer community in general. In addition, NanoVM will make certain pre-built packages available for things such as databases and web servers, further removing the entry barrier to deploying a unikernel based application.

With the launch of Ops and the concurrent availability of pre-built packages, NanoVMs have quickly taken unikernels from a difficult and geeky application deployment model to something that is based on corporate adoption. Being able to build, run, and test a unikernel simply by executing a single command on a laptop and then distributing the application to the public or private cloud of choice will be extremely powerful for enterprise customers seeking the performance and security that unikernels can provide.

Conclusion

With the launch of Ops by NanoVMs, we could probably see renewed enthusiasm for the technology and more widespread adoption.

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