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Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

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Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#11

Post by gbxk »

ofrzeta wrote: post #9
gbxk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(sorry I didn't reply in-thread, I'm new to HN, re-posting response here:) Exactly! The main local requirement is to have hardware virtualization available (e.g. /dev/kvm) but that should be fine on your local linux machine. Won't work in cloud machines or on Mac ARM in current form but maybe if I extend

There are some providers that offer KVM nested virtualization, I think Google Cloud, Digital Ocean ... any others?

True! GCP does. I haven't tested it yet. I didn't know D.O does. If anyone knows others, I'm interested too!

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#13

Post by gbxk »

empath75 wrote: post #12

This seems like an amazing stack that ticks a lot of boxes for me, but I really dislike cli or a custom api as the UX for this and would prefer to manage all of this with CRDs so i can just use the k8s client for everything.

Actually you can! After you run "k7 install" you'll have a k3s cluster up and running, with Kata as a runtime class, and Firecracker specified in Kata config. So nothing prevents you from hitting the Kubernetes API! kubectl will work.

Note: I use k3s' internal kubectl and containerd, to avoid messing with your own if you have some already installed. That means you can run commands like "k3s kubectl ..."

And thank you for the compliments on the stack.

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#14

Post by [deleted] »

gbxk wrote: post #13
empath75 wrote: post #12

This seems like an amazing stack that ticks a lot of boxes for me, but I really dislike cli or a custom api as the UX for this and would prefer to manage all of this with CRDs so i can just use the k8s client for everything.

Actually you can! After you run "k7 install" you'll have a k3s cluster up and running, with Kata as a runtime class, and Firecracker specified in Kata config. So nothing prevents you from hitting the Kubernetes API! kubectl will work. Note: I use k3s' internal kubectl and containerd, to avoid messing with your own if you have some already installed. That means you can run commands like "k3s kubectl ..." And thank you…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#15

Post by gbxk »

empath75 wrote: post #12

This seems like an amazing stack that ticks a lot of boxes for me, but I really dislike cli or a custom api as the UX for this and would prefer to manage all of this with CRDs so i can just use the k8s client for everything.

If you have any suggestion on how I can make this more friendly UX-wise to your personal usage, I am most interested to hear! And this will shape my roadmap.

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#16

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

gbxk wrote: post #10
alexeldeib wrote: post #6

as someone in the space this ticks a lot of boxes: kubernetes-native, strong isolation, python sdk (ideal for ML scenarios). devmapper is a nice ootb approach. Glancing at the readme, is your business model technical support? Or what's your plan with this? Anything interesting to share around startup time for large artifacts, scaling, passing through persistent storage (or GPUs) to these sandboxes? Curious what thing…

No business model short-term. My goal is broad adoption, 100% open-source. By multi-node I mean so far I only support 1 k8s node, i.e. 1 machine, but soon adding support for multiple. Still, on 20 CPUs I can run +50 VM pods with fractional vCPU limits. For GPU passthrough: not possible today because I use Firecracker as VMM. On roadmap: Add support for Qemu, then GPU passthrough possible. Inter-VM networking: it's al…

> No business model short-term. My goal is broad adoption, 100% open-source.

IMHO that's kind of a red flag. There's a happy path here where it's successful but stays low-maintenance enough that you just work on it in your spare time, or it takes of and gets community support, or you get sponsorships or such. But there's also an option where in a year or two it becomes your job and you decide to monetize by rug-pulling and announce that actually paying the bills is more important than staying 100% open source. Not a dig at you, just something that's happened enough times that I get nervous when people don't have a plan and therefore don't have a plan to avoid the outcome that creates problems for users.

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#17

Post by gbxk »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #16
gbxk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No business model short-term. My goal is broad adoption, 100% open-source. By multi-node I mean so far I only support 1 k8s node, i.e. 1 machine, but soon adding support for multiple. Still, on 20 CPUs I can run +50 VM pods with fractional vCPU limits. For GPU passthrough: not possible today because I use Firecracker as VMM. On roadmap: Add support for Qemu, then GPU passthrough possible. Inter-VM networking: it's al…

> No business model short-term. My goal is broad adoption, 100% open-source. IMHO that's kind of a red flag. There's a happy path here where it's successful but stays low-maintenance enough that you just work on it in your spare time, or it takes of and gets community support, or you get sponsorships or such. But there's also an option where in a year or two it becomes your job and you decide to monetize by rug-pulli…

Sure one day if it really kicks off I could think of offering additionally a SaaS solution with paid enterprise features like SOC 2 compliance, RBAC, multiple clouds supported, etc. Why not. But I strongly believe that for it to be successful, it needs a strong open-source base. Then, billing huge companies for compliance features or huge usage makes sense. That would support development of the open-source part too.

I like the Docker model, for instance: free for companies under 250 employees or $10m/y revenue.

In any case, it will always be open-source.

Those paid enterprise features wouldn't come from closed-source: they would come from compliance of a particular SaaS-offered infra setup, that anybody else could reproduce. Just like HuggingFace.

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#18

Post by elric »

mentalgear wrote: post #3

I would really like to see a good local sandboxing solution in this space, something that is truly local-first. This is especially important since many coding models / agentic builders will eventually become lightweight enough to run them on-device instead of having to buy tokens and share user data with big LLM cloud providers.

Are there any such solutions that can adequately protect against side-channel attacks (à la rowhammer, meltdown, spectre, ...)? I mean protecting local file access and network access is pretty easy, but side-channels and VM escaping attacks seem like a bigger concern.

Re: Show HN: Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec

#20

Post by gbxk »

ed_mercer wrote: post #19

Why do I need this if I already have containers and k8s for running agents?

It is well known that containers do not provide you safe isolation. It is not their purpose. They share kernel and page cache with the host. Any kernel exploit gives to someone in a container potential root control of the host (see DirtyPipe, DirtyCow). That's why you need VM-level isolation.
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