A multiserver user-space unikernel for a distributed virtualization system

Abstract

Nowadays, most Cloud applications are developed using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) or MicroService Architecture (MSA). The scalability and performance of them is achieved by executing multiple instances of its components in different nodes of a virtualization cluster. Initially, they were deployed in Virtual Machines (VMs) but, they required enough computational, memory, network and storage resources to hold an Operating System (OS), a set of utilities, libraries, and the application component. By deploying hundreds of these application components, the resource requirements increase a lot. To minimize them, usually small OSs with small memory footprint are used. Another way to reduce the resource requirements is integrating the application components in a Unikernel. This article proposes a Unikernel called MUK, based on a multiserver OS, to be used as a tool to integrate Cloud application components. MUK was built to run in userspace of a Distributed Virtualization System. Both technologies facilitate the scattering of application components in a virtualization cluster keeping the isolation properties and minimal attack surface of a Unikernel.