Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Unikernels
T2 - library operating systems for the cloud
AU - Madhavapeddy, Anil
AU - Mortier, Richard
AU - Rotsos, Charalampos
AU - Scott, David
AU - Singh, Balraj
AU - Gazagnaire, Thomas
AU - Smith, Steven
AU - Hand, Steven
AU - Crowcroft, Jon
PY - 2013/3/1
Y1 - 2013/3/1
N2 - We present unikernels, a new approach to deploying cloud services via applications written in high-level source code. Unikernels are single-purpose appliances that are compile-time specialised into standalone kernels, and sealed against modification when deployed to a cloud platform. In return they offer significant reduction in image sizes, improved efficiency and security, and should reduce operational costs. Our Mirage prototype compiles OCaml code into unikernels that run on commodity clouds and offer an order of magnitude reduction in code size without significant performance penalty. The architecture combines static type-safety with a single address-space layout that can be made immutable via a hypervisor extension. Mirage contributes a suite of type-safe protocol libraries, and our results demonstrate that the hypervisor is a platform that overcomes the hardware compatibility issues that have made past library operating systems impractical to deploy in the real-world.
AB - We present unikernels, a new approach to deploying cloud services via applications written in high-level source code. Unikernels are single-purpose appliances that are compile-time specialised into standalone kernels, and sealed against modification when deployed to a cloud platform. In return they offer significant reduction in image sizes, improved efficiency and security, and should reduce operational costs. Our Mirage prototype compiles OCaml code into unikernels that run on commodity clouds and offer an order of magnitude reduction in code size without significant performance penalty. The architecture combines static type-safety with a single address-space layout that can be made immutable via a hypervisor extension. Mirage contributes a suite of type-safe protocol libraries, and our results demonstrate that the hypervisor is a platform that overcomes the hardware compatibility issues that have made past library operating systems impractical to deploy in the real-world.
U2 - 10.1145/2499368.2451167
DO - 10.1145/2499368.2451167
M3 - Journal article
VL - 48
SP - 461
EP - 472
JO - ACM SIGPLAN Notices
JF - ACM SIGPLAN Notices
SN - 0362-1340
IS - 4
ER -