Container (virtualization)

Linux Container virtualization is an os-level virtualization technology based in Linux kernel cgroups and namespaces features. Docker containers are available since 2013 and runC was first released in July 2015 as version 0.0.1.

Containers:

• Docker: docker version
• Container runtime: containerd, runc (2015)
• Podman daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on Linux
• Buildah
• skopeo
• lxc (2008)
• Kata containers
• Kubernetes init containers (initContainers)

Containers Technology Timeline

• 2007 Cgroups v1 was added into the Linux kernel (cgroups version 1).
• 2008 LXC
• 2012 OpenShift Origin the open source codebase used in the OpenShift PaaS released
• 2011 Openshift platform is launched based on Linux containers
• 2013/03 Docker
• 2013/10 Container Linux (CoreOS)
• 2014/06 Kubernetes container orchestration
• 2014/10 docker-compose available
• 2015 runC released
• 2015 GKE
• 2016 cgroups-v2 Linux kernel 4.5
• 2016 Docker swarm
• 2018/05 gVisor
• 2019/02 containerd becames official CNCF project
• 2019/05 Red Hat remove docker from RHEL 8 and includes runC

Tools

• Buildah, building containers.
• Podman, running containers.
• Skopeo, sharing/finding containers.
• runc container management tool from Open Container Initiative

containerd

containerd is an industry-standard container runtime.

Related terms

• Containers networking
• Container Scanning
• Container Registry, software that enables container image storage and management
• Shipping containers
• Alpine
• AWS ECS, AWS Proton

Activities

1. Understand the differences between runc, containerd and docker. https://medium.com/@alenkacz/whats-the-difference-between-runc-containerd-docker-3fc8f79d4d6e
2. Read Windows containers installation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick-start/set-up-environment?tabs=Windows-Server
3. Read AWS blog about containers: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/

See also

• Containers, OCI: Docker (dockerd), containerd, runc, Podman, buildah, skopeo, lxd, Container Registry, Service mesh, Windows Server containers, Containerpilot, CoreOS, CAdvisor, Containers networking, Container scanning, cosign, CRI, CRI-O, initContainers, Sidecar container, Container images, latest
• Container orchestration: Kubernetes, Nomad, Docker Swarm, OpenShift, Mesos, Marathon, AWS Fargate

https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/releases/tag/v0.0.1

"diff between Linux kernel 4.4 and 4.5". 2016-03-14.

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/Announcing-OpenShift-Origin-Open-Source-Code-For-Platform-as-a-Service?source=author&term=2661

https://blog.openshift.com/red-hat-chose-kubernetes-openshift/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Container_Initiative

https://www.mankier.com/1/containerd

https://containerd.io/

https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/master/man/runc.8.md

https://www.mankier.com/1/containerd