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VM-based Containers

VM-based containers run container workloads inside lightweight virtual machines. They preserve the familiar container deployment model while adding a stronger isolation boundary than process-based containers.

This chapter introduces how VM-based container runtimes can use Asterinas as a guest kernel.

Why Asterinas?

Asterinas is a good fit for VM-based containers because it offers a smaller attack surface and a stronger security foundation than Linux. Its framekernel architecture helps reduce the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) of the guest kernel.

At the same time, Asterinas provides a Linux-compatible ABI. This allows many existing Linux workloads to migrate to Asterinas-based VM environments seamlessly, without requiring changes to the applications themselves.

Supported runtimes

Here is the list of secure container runtimes that have been verified to work with Asterinas: