Clear Containers for Docker* Engine

Today at work, I announced something James Hunt, Ikey Doherty and myself have been working on. We integrated Clear Containers technology with Docker* Engine to create Clear Containers for Docker* Engine.

After following installation instructions, one can pull and run existing Docker* containers in the secure Clear Containers environment. This means that instead of namespaces, a fast virtual machine is started using the kvmtool hypervisor. This VM is running an optimised minimal Linux* kernel and the optimised Clear Linux* for Intel® Architecture Project user-space, with the only goal to execute the Docker* workload and then shut down.

The net effect is almost indistinguishable from typical Docker* container usage:

$ docker run -ti ubuntu:vivid
root@d88a60502ed7:/# systemd-detect-virt
kvm

Apart from, as you see, it's running inside a kvm VM, and thus protected by Intel® Virtualization Technology.

This is available on Clear Linux* as well as multiple other operating systems.

I hope this is exciting enough for people to try out, and if you have any feedback, feel free to leave comments or join our mailing list.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent Intel’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

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