MettEagle: Costs and Benefits of Implementing Containers on Microkernels

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/ReportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Till Miemietz - , Barkhausen Institut (Author)
  • Viktor Reusch - , Barkhausen Institut (Author)
  • Matthias Hille - , Barkhausen Institut (Author)
  • Lars Wrenger - , Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) (Author)
  • Jana Eisoldt - , Barkhausen Institut (Author)
  • Jan Klötzke - , Kernkonzept GmbH (Author)
  • Max Kurze - , TUD Dresden University of Technology (Author)
  • Adam Lackorzynski - , Professor (rtd.) of Operating Systems, Kernkonzept GmbH (Author)
  • Michael Roitzsch - , Barkhausen Institut (Author)
  • Hermann Härtig - , Professor (rtd.) of Operating Systems, Barkhausen Institut (Author)

Abstract

Today, many applications are hosted by cloud providers. In order to isolate the workloads of different clients, cloud enterprises mostly rely on containers rather than standard processes, since the latter are able to exercise a lot of ambient authority. Containers counter this deficiency by sandboxing processes. To this end, they use dedicated security mechanisms such as seccomp-bpf. However, these mechanisms add complexity to the kernel and increase its attack surface, thus prompting new security challenges. Processes in microkernel-based systems do not have ambient authority. Thus, they do not require additional security mechanisms to build sandboxes. In this paper, we try to answer the question whether a microkernel-based OS architecture enables a leaner and more secure container infrastructure. Based on a CVE analysis, we show that the conceptual simplicity of containers on microkernels results in a better security posture than that typically found on monolithic systems. We furthermore demonstrate the practical feasibility of implementing containers on state-of-the-art microkernels by building MettEagle, a prototype container service running on L4Re. We found that applications running in containers on L4Re expose performance characteristics comparable to that of containers on Linux for both synthetic and real-world benchmarks. In some cases, the container implementation of L4Re even outperforms Linux, accelerating container startup latency and improving network performance.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication19th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation
Pages979-996
Number of pages18
ISBN (electronic)9781939133472
Publication statusPublished - 9 Jul 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 105011594624