Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Behind the Story of Firecracker MicroVM: Written in Rust!


Welcome to the captivating narrative behind the development of Firecracker MicroVM—a groundbreaking virtualization technology meticulously crafted in the Rust programming language

Developed by the team at Amazon Web Services, Firecracker was specifically designed to enhance resource utilization and customer experience for services like AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate within the context of public cloud infrastructure. Its primary focus lies in delivering optimal security and isolation. Initially based on Chromium OS's Virtual Machine Monitor, crosvm, which is an open-source VMM written in Rust, Firecracker has evolved independently to meet distinct customer requirements.

While originating from a common foundation, Firecracker and crosvm have diverged over time, each tailoring its features and capabilities to address specific needs. To foster collaboration and innovation in the realm of Rust-based virtualization components, the Rust-vmm community was established. This open-source community serves as a platform for collective efforts, bringing together contributors from various groups and individuals, including those associated with crosvm, to build and share high-quality Rust-based virtualization components.

Written in Rust

Firecracker, the underlying technology developed for efficient virtualization, is implemented using the Rust programming language. Rust is a systems programming language known for its emphasis on performance, memory safety, and zero-cost abstractions. Choosing Rust for Firecracker aligns with the project's goals of achieving high performance, robust security, and effective resource utilization in the realm of cloud-based virtualization. The language's features, such as ownership and borrowing, contribute to the creation of a reliable and efficient virtual machine monitor, ensuring the stability and integrity of Firecracker in diverse computing environments.

The Firecracker Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is designed to be compatible with various processors, emphasizing processor agnosticism. For production workloads, it is generally available on 64-bit Intel, AMD, and Arm CPUs that support hardware virtualization. This approach ensures flexibility and broad accessibility across different processor architectures, allowing Firecracker to seamlessly integrate into diverse computing environments while leveraging the hardware virtualization capabilities of these processors for optimal performance and efficiency.

Firecracker MicroVM License

Firecracker is released under the Apache License, version 2.0, granting users the freedom to utilize, copy, and distribute their modifications under terms of their choosing. This permissive open-source license provides flexibility and encourages collaboration by allowing developers to adapt and share their improvements based on their preferences.

Similarly, certain code sections within Crosvm follow the BSD-3-Clause license. This license, like Apache 2.0, permits users to freely use, copy, and distribute modifications under terms they find suitable. The dual licensing approach employed by Firecracker and Crosvm underscores a commitment to openness, fostering a collaborative environment where developers have the liberty to customize and share their enhancements within the boundaries of their chosen licensing terms.

Furthermore, see their official website https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/

0 comments:

Post a Comment