hyper

README

HyperContainer - Hypervisor-agnostic Docker Runtime

This repo contains two parts: the daemon of HyperContainer hyperd and the CLIhyperctl.

What is HyperContainer?

HyperContainer is a hypervisor-agnostic technology that allows you to run Docker images on plain hypervisor.

Why HyperContainer?

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HyperContainer combines the best from both worlds: VM and Container.

-	Container	VM	HyperContainer
Isolation	Weak, shared kernel	Strong, HW-enforced	Strong, HW-enforced
Portable	Yes, but kernel dependent sometimes	No, hypervisor dependent	Yes, hypervisor agnostic and portable image
Boot	Fast, sub-second	Slow, tens of seconds	Fast, sub-second
Performance	Great	OK	Good, minimal resource footprint and overhead
Immutable	Yes	No, configuration management required	Yes, only kernel+image
Image Size	Small, MBs	Big, GBs	Small, MBs
Compatibility	No, need new tools	Great, everything just works	Good, it is still a "Machine", much less changes
Mature	Not yet	Production ready, SDN, SDS, LiveMigration, etc.	Yes, just plug-&-play
ROI	Rebuild everything with container	-	Reuse your virtual infrastructure

*BYOK = bring your own kernel

Requirements

• QEMU 2.0 or later (QEMU 2.6 or later for ARM64 Architecture)
• Xen 4.5 and VT enabled host (for Xen support)

Installation

Ensure you are running Linux (kernel 3.8 or later) and have QEMU (version 2.0 or later) installed. Then download the binaries and install them (hyper-container and hyperstart) directly.

For the detail of installation, please refer to the documents.

For information on using the command line, just type hyperctl. You may use hyperctl <command> --help for detailed information on any specific command.

Build From Source

Clone hyperd in GoPath

> mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/hyperhq
> cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/hyperhq
> git clone https://github.com/hyperhq/hyperd.git hyperd

And make sure you have go (>= 1.7) , device-mapper-devel, and autotools, go into the hyperd dir

> ./autogen.sh
> ./configure
> make

Then you can find the binaries hyperd daemon and hyperctl cmdline tool in current directory. Before running those commands, a config file needs to be placed at /etc/hyper/config directory, and you can find a sample under ${TOP}/package/dist/etc/hyper/config. Kernel and Initrd are required for starting the hyperd daemon, you can find those files from HyperStart project.

Find out more

• Documentation
• Get Started
• Reference
• Release Notes

Contact Us

Found a bug, want to suggest a feature, or have a question? File an issue. When reporting a bug, please include which version of hyperd you are running, as shown by hyperctl --version.

• Twitter: @hyper_sh
• Blog: https://hyper.sh/blog.html
• Slack: #hyper (The IRC has been migrated to slack.)