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MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

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Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#111

Post by mrud »

mohsen1 wrote: post #105

I’ve been working with AgentCore that uses the same MicroVMs. They are capable in many ways but for coding agents that load a big got repo they get bloated quickly with the git repo. I’m building this google3 style mounting to address this. https://github.com/mohsen1/git-lazy-mount Still work in progress but for now I am seeing promising results

ramp i think just prebuilts the image/snapshot with the latest checkout version regularly [0]. do you think putting it into the image would address it?

[0] https://builders.ramp.com/post/why-we-built-our-background-a...

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#112

Post by Teknoman117 »

apitman wrote: post #110

The holy grail microVM for me is one that can properly share a GPU across VMs, similar to what you can do with containers. Shout out to https://smolmachines.com/ for supporting Vulkan over virtio-gpu/Venus. Currently the best implementation I'm aware of. Unfortunately my use case is running a full desktop inside the VM, and streaming it out over something like Sunshine/Moonlight. For this you need GPU rendering and v…

The problem is that this feature is generally restricted to enterprise customers because VDI systems are such a profitable market. NVIDIA and AMD both only offer this on enterprise cards, and Intel has been very wishy-washy on support in their cards.

If you're looking for a thing to google, look up SR-IOV support on (consumer) GPUs.

Also if you're wondering who the customers of these things tend to be, it's generally the CAD market, law firms, etc. If no one's laptop contains sensitive data and can only stream the desktop of a remote system, the loss or theft of an employee's computer isn't nearly the same kind of a security worry.

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#113

Post by stubbi »

wasting_time wrote: post #55
stubbi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

Can you provide a link to your project? Self-plugs are fairly common around here, and usually appreciated (or at least not frowned upon) when it comes with juicy source code.

https://github.com/mitos-run/mitos :)

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#114

Post by apitman »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #112
apitman wrote: post #110

The holy grail microVM for me is one that can properly share a GPU across VMs, similar to what you can do with containers. Shout out to https://smolmachines.com/ for supporting Vulkan over virtio-gpu/Venus. Currently the best implementation I'm aware of. Unfortunately my use case is running a full desktop inside the VM, and streaming it out over something like Sunshine/Moonlight. For this you need GPU rendering and v…

The problem is that this feature is generally restricted to enterprise customers because VDI systems are such a profitable market. NVIDIA and AMD both only offer this on enterprise cards, and Intel has been very wishy-washy on support in their cards. If you're looking for a thing to google, look up SR-IOV support on (consumer) GPUs. Also if you're wondering who the customers of these things tend to be, it's generally…

I'm aware of SR-IOV. Widespread support would go a long way, but doesn't it require pre-slicing the GPU into discrete chunks? I want microVMs that can share share a GPU dynamically the same way they share overprovisioned CPU resources. Much more like containers.

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#115

Post by otterley »

skybrian wrote: post #103
otterley wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Click on the "MicroVMs" tab of the pricing page: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/

Thanks! These tabs render badly on mobile, but you can click on “Functions” to hide it and then click the “MicroVMs” tab to show it. This pricing model looks very complicated and unfriendly for hobbyists. Maybe it’s cheaper than exe.dev’s $20/month, but I have no idea. I’d have to a complicated calculation based on guesses to tell.

I don't think it's that complicated, but yeah, it's not as simple as $X/month.

The primary difference is that with Lambda you pay by the second, not by the month. According to my math, the break-even point for a 8GB allocation (the minimum exe.dev supplies) would be about 1.65 days of continuous runtime. Less than that, and you're better off with Lambda. More than that, and you're better off with exe.dev (assuming we're just talking about money and not opportunity cost). Lambda allows you to use just 2GB of memory, though, so being more memory efficient would change the break-even point to 6.61 days.

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#116

Post by tptacek »

ilaksh wrote: post #95
Multicomp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of Fly.io's model off the top of my head, though its not a self-hosted firecracker as such.

I specifically complained to a fly.io staff on here about their "gotcha, b*tch" usage based pricing which they basically copied from AWS, and they stood by it and other people here backed them up. No one is giving me a pile of free money, so I can't risk that kind of thing.

Exactly what did we copy from AWS here? You could get a long way in our decisionmaking process generally by just consciously avoiding what AWS does.

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#117

Post by emirb »

alasano wrote: post #51

We have this page which compares a whole bunch of sandbox providers in different categories https://engine.build/lab/agent-sandboxes Will add MicroVMs there today (and any others that are missing if you let me know!)

Do you mind adding https://isorun.ai? We just launched last week. Founder here (Staff SRE with 20 years in Linux, fastest and cheapest SaaS agentic runtime running on heavily modified Firecracker)

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#118

Post by tptacek »

anamexis wrote: post #57
simonw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fly.io doesn't set a maximum of 8 hours of alive time on your instance. Also, MicroVMs can't be exposed directly to the web. Your code running in them can only be executed via API calls with attached auth tokens - so if you wanted to host a public facing API or website with them you'd need to implement your own additional layer in front. Something I appreciate about Fly (disclaimer: they support my work) is that the…

Fly.io's Sprites [1] do offer public web access as an option. They also have dynamic pricing. https://sprites.dev

To a first approximation everything in this space has dynamic pricing. If it's not priced dynamically, you're presumably paying a premium either on a commit or in gym pricing.

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#119

Post by tptacek »

simonw wrote: post #23
colesantiago wrote: post #21

How does this compare to Fly.io Which is more cheaper for me? Ideally maybe self hosting would be better?

Fly.io doesn't set a maximum of 8 hours of alive time on your instance. Also, MicroVMs can't be exposed directly to the web. Your code running in them can only be executed via API calls with attached auth tokens - so if you wanted to host a public facing API or website with them you'd need to implement your own additional layer in front. Something I appreciate about Fly (disclaimer: they support my work) is that the…

I'm pretty proud of this:

https://fly.io/blog/accident-forgiveness/

A way we simply suck at business: we didn't keep beating the drum about this after we wrote the policy up. We just sort of figured everyone read the blog post and moved on. We probably should have been continuously making noise about it.

What you get from having a company made almost entirely of engineers.

Re: MicroVMs: Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control

#120

Post by eperot »

coppsilgold wrote: post #77
ilaksh wrote: post #18

What's the best provider to self-host Firecracker? I feel that AWS is not a safe or cost-effective option for a self-funded startup or small business. Although is anything cost effective anymore? Hetzner just had a massive price hike. Part of it might just be that I am old and inflation is catching up with my understanding of prices. But as far as AWS I still have to say no thanks. Imagine some group actually started…

The simplest worthwhile DIY sandbox you can have is to layer two tools: bwrap and gvisor. bwrap args -- gvisor args do args -- /path/sandboxee args bwrap will set up the environment and then gvisor elevates it into a true sandbox. Standalone gvisor (not the 'do' subcommand) used to be a mess with the OCI json requirement, but recently they began work on presenting their own bwrap interface (likely to pursue AI agent…

Any reason why you wouldn't use gVisor's bwrap interface yet? We're working on it precisely to make DIY sandboxing on Linux as easy as possible in order to get Linux-sandboxing-at-home to mature beyond the current syscall-filter-and-namespaces duct tape stage, so I'm curious to know what you'd like to see.
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