The Kata Containers project, the first non-OpenStack project hosted by the OpenStack Foundation, today launched version 1.0 of its system for running isolated container workloads. The idea behind Kata Containers, which is the result of the merger of two similar projects previously run by Intel and Hyper, is to offer developers a container-like experience with the same security and isolation features of a more traditional virtual machine.
To do this, Kata Containers implements a very lightweight virtual machine (VM) for every container. That means every container gets the same kind of hardware isolation that you would expect from a VM, but without the large overhead. But even though Kata Containers don’t fit the standard definition of a software container, they are still compatible with the Open Container Initiative specs and the container runtime interface of Kubernetes. While it’s hosted by the OpenStack Foundation, Kata Containers is meant to be platform- and architecture-agnostic.
Intel, Canonical and Red Hat have announced they are putting some financial support behind the project, and a large number of cloud vendors have announced additional support, too, including 99cloud, Google, Huawei, Mirantis, NetApp and SUSE.
With this version 1.0 release, the Kata community is signaling that the merger of the Intel and Hyper technology is complete and that the software is ready for production use.