Small request : Deployment and disk space is cool, but could people benchmark speed and RAM too ( vs regular VM and vs no VM at all as well) ?
I'm asking because IIUC, unikernel remove the need to switch from kernel mode to user mode, and thus should provide a tremendous speed in everything memory-related. Yet, the only thing i see mentionned so far are security, disk space and boot time.
That is indeed what we do here. We took the principles we love and strongly believe in for application releases (one immutable unit, regenerated after every change & promoted unchanged from environment to environment) and applied them to the whole stack.
No more reconfiguring each node individually. No more subtle differences between machines or environments.
It is based on the Linux kernel + your application. So an ultra lightweight image indeed. The advantage is that all components are rock solid and standard.
Thats not technically a unikernel, unless you link them into a single executable (which has licensing issues with Linux). Single application OS would be a better term, as it is confusing otherwise.
Yeah, this appears to be a bit misleading. It sounds as if they're just running the compiled jar as the /sbin/init process. IMO, thats a very lightweight distro but not a unikernel. #NotAnExpert.
I'm asking because IIUC, unikernel remove the need to switch from kernel mode to user mode, and thus should provide a tremendous speed in everything memory-related. Yet, the only thing i see mentionned so far are security, disk space and boot time.