Container-basedOperatingSystemVirtualization: AScalable,High-performanceAlternativetoHypervisors

popularized by Xen and VMware, are quickly becoming commodity. They are appropriate for many us- age scenarios, but there are scenarios that require system virtualization with high degrees of both isolation and effi- ciency. Examples include HPC clusters, the Grid, hosting centers, and PlanetLab. We present an alternative to hy- pervisors that is better suited to such scenarios. The ap- proach is a synthesis of prior work on resource containers and security containers applied to general-purpose, time- shared operating systems. Examples of such container-based systems include Solaris 10, Virtuozzo for Linux, and Linux- VServer. As a representative instance of container-based systems, this paper describes the design and implementa- tion of Linux-VServer. In addition, it contrasts the archi- tecture of Linux-VServer with current generations of Xen, and shows how Linux-VServer provides comparable support for isolation and superior system efficiency.