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Kata Containers is an open source container runtime, building lightweight virtual machines that seamlessly plug into the container ecosystem. Kata Containers is an open source community working to build a secure container runtime with lightweight virtual machines that feel and perform like containers, but provide stronger workload isolation using hardware virtualization technology as a second layer of defense. Since launching in December 2017, the community successfully merged the best parts of Intel Clear Containers with Hyper.sh RunV and scaled to include support for major architectures including AMD64, ARM, IBM p-series, and IBM z-series in addition to x86_64. Kata Containers also supports multiple hypervisors including QEMU, Cloud-Hypervisor, and Firecracker, and integrates with the containerd project among others.
Features
- Runs in a dedicated kernel, providing isolation of network, I/O and memory and can utilize hardware-enforced isolation with virtualization VT extensions
- Supports industry standards including OCI container format, Kubernetes CRI interface, as well as legacy virtualization technologies
- Delivers consistent performance as standard Linux containers; increased isolation without the performance tax of standard virtual machines
- Eliminates the requirement for nesting containers inside full blown virtual machines; standard interfaces make it easy to plug in and get started
- Baidu is running Kata Containers in production to support Function Computing
- Supports the development and adoption of open infrastructure globally
Project Samples
