LinuxCon + CloudOpen + ContainerCon NA 2015

What Comes After Containers? The Rise of Unikernels for Next Generation Clouds. Docker and Linux container technologies dominate headlines today as a powerful, easy way to package applications, especially as cloud computing becomes more mainstream. They offer a simple, clean and lean way to distribute application workloads. With enthusiasm continuing to grow for container innovations, a related technology called unikernels is also beginning to attract attention. Unikernels are small, fast, easily deployable, and very secure application stacks. Known also for their ability to cleanly separate functionality at the component level, unikernels are developing a variety of new approaches to deploy cloud services. Like container-based solutions, this technology fulfills the promise of easy deployment, but unikernels also offer an extremely tiny, specialized runtime footprint that is much less vulnerable to attack. Lacking a traditional operating system layer, they provide a new way of looking at the cloud that some say goes beyond the methodologies used by container technologies. How are unikernels and containers similar; how are they different? When should cloud and data center operators use unikernels on hypervisors instead of containers? How do each handle security? Will the future of development and deployment contain a mix of containers and unikernels? This panel will debate and discuss these questions and more.