Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

github.com

21–30 of 144 posts

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#21

If this works, this is fantastic. Getting away from the stupidly complex abstractions around Docker is a welcome change, especially if we can still package and deploy immutable images. We already manage containers like tiny VMs, so ditching the abstractions should simplify life a bit.

Have you looked at LXD/LXC? I find it to be a great compromise between the high overhead of VMs and the complex abstractions around Docker.

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#22
Can someone dumb this down for me? What _exactly_ is going on here?

> slim will build a micro-vm from a Dockerfile. Slim works by building and extracting a rootfs from a Dockerfile, and then merging that filesystem with a small minimal kernel that runs in RAM.

> This results in a real VM that can boot instantly, while using very limited resources. If done properly, slim can allow you to design and build immutable unikernels for running services, or build tiny and embedded development environments.

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#23
post #21

If this works, this is fantastic. Getting away from the stupidly complex abstractions around Docker is a welcome change, especially if we can still package and deploy immutable images. We already manage containers like tiny VMs, so ditching the abstractions should simplify life a bit.

Have you looked at LXD/LXC? I find it to be a great compromise between the high overhead of VMs and the complex abstractions around Docker.

Yes, it's still just more abstractions. If you look at the way people use ECS, allocating specific resource limits to each container, it's basically a micro EC2 node. And for me, the only reason I use containers is to make it easier to package and run applications immutably. If I can do that without "containerisms", all the better. It also seems like VMs would solve a good deal of multi-tenancy issues.

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#24
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, containers and VMs are two different things (are they not?).

They are different, yes.

Do some containers run outside a VM? Docker for example "uses operating-system-level virtualization to develop and deliver software in packages called containers."

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are different, yes.

Do some containers run outside a VM? Docker for example "uses operating-system-level virtualization to develop and deliver software in packages called containers."

Most containers run outside of VMs.

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are different, yes.

Do some containers run outside a VM? Docker for example "uses operating-system-level virtualization to develop and deliver software in packages called containers."

That's not a virtual machine.

I'd personally blame marketing-speak on using "virtualization" at all (unless they refer to their windows/mac offerings, which can run a Linux VM as the docker host, on which the containers are run), but I can see how one could also stretch a definition of virtualization in a way that covers container.

Sometimes containers are run in VMs, but they are almost defined as "do not require a full VM running an OS, but instead talk to the host kernel".

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#27

Can someone dumb this down for me? What _exactly_ is going on here? > slim will build a micro-vm from a Dockerfile. Slim works by building and extracting a rootfs from a Dockerfile, and then merging that filesystem with a small minimal kernel that runs in RAM. > This results in a real VM that can boot instantly, while using very limited resources. If done properly, slim can allow you to design and build immutable uni…

Docker images contain a filesystem for an operating system, minus the OS kernel. This project uses Docker to build a tiny OS, extracts all the files out of the Docker image, adds a small OS kernel and re-packages that as a VM image.

Re: Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

#30
post #15

Why JavaScript instead of something more performant?

What for? It's just glue code, it doesn't actually run the micro-VMs.

Because I don't want to have to install the massive nodejs runtime just to glue things together.
Post reply on HN