Taking system containers to the next level

Speaker: Serge Hallyn

Abstract

LXC dates back to the original pushing of container functionality into the upstream Linux kernel. As the kernel support for containers improved, so did LXC. Today LXC provides tremendous flexibility along with simple defaults and support for completely unprivileged, safe containers.

LXD is a new project by the LXC community with a different focus. It does not replace LXC, but builds upon it. It uses the LXC API go bindings to provide containers as a network service. It offers: secure containers by default; a secure REST API to allow for both a rich set of alternative clients and interoperability with containers on other operating systems; and a new, intuitive command line experience (built upon the REST API) centered around remotes and an image-based workflow.

I'll present the motivations for and design of LXD. I'll go over the REST API and the command line experience. Then I'll demonstrate LXD, beginning with simple getting started and building up to more complicated examples.

Slides

Biography

Serge Hallyn has been using Linux since around 1997. He works for Canonical as a member of the Ubuntu Server team, with a particular focus on the virtualization stack. He has been involved with containers since the first upstream kernel patches for uts and pid namespaces. He was involved with LSM from the start, is listed as co-maintainer of the security subsystem and capabilities, and is a core maintainer of the LXC project.