unik

README

UniK (pronounced you-neek) is a tool for compiling application sources into unikernels (lightweight bootable disk images) rather than binaries. UniK runs and manages instances of compiled images across a variety of cloud providers as well as locally on Virtualbox. UniK utilizes a simple docker-like command line interface, making building unikernels as easy as building containers.

UniK is built to be easily extensible, allowing (and encouraging) adding support for unikernel compilers and cloud providers. See architecture for a better understanding of UniK's pluggable code design.

To learn more about the motivation behind project UniK, read our blog post or watch session.
To stay up-to-date on UniK, follow us @ProjectUnik and join us on our slack channel

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Update:

The UniK Instance Listener, which is required for bootstrapping instances on Virtualbox and vSphere providers is now deployed as a unikernel! No more downloads from AWS. UniK now will automatically compile and deploy the Instance Listener as a unikernel when the daemon is launched. Read the updated instance listener documentation.

UniK no longer requires go or qemu as dependencies! All dependencies for UniK are now bundled into docker, including compilation of UniK itself. make install will no longer install UniK to your path. Instead, run make to pull containers and compile unik in an isolated (containerized) context with no need for dependencies. The UniK executable will be placed in unik/_build/. We recommend placing this binary in a path directory (such as /usr/local/bin) to make it easily accessible from anywhere on your system.

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Documentation

• Installation
  • Install UniK
  • Configuring the daemon
  • Launching the InstanceListener
• Getting Started
  • Run your first Go unikernel on Virtualbox with UniK
  • Run your first Java unikernel on AWS with UniK
• User Documenation
  • Using the command line interface
  • Compiling Node.js Applications to Unikernels
  • Compiling Go Applications to Unikernels
  • Compiling Java Applications to Unikernels
  • Compiling C/C++ Applications to Unikernels
• Developer Documentation
  • UniK's REST API
  • Adding compiler support
  • Adding provider support

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Supported unikernel types:

• rump: UniK supports compiling C/C++, Node.js and Go code into rumprun unikernels
• OSv: UniK supports compiling Java code into OSv unikernels

We are looking for community help to add support for more unikernel types and languages.

Supported providers:

• Virtualbox
• AWS
• vSphere

Roadmap:

• additional provider support including OpenStack
• dynamic volume and application arguments configuration at instance runtime (rather than at compile time)
• adding a test suite
• better code documentation
• unik pull & unik push && unikhub for sharing unikernel images
• multi-account support per provider (i.e. multiple AWS accounts/regions, etc.)
• migrate from martini to echo
• self-healing state (i.e. unik can identify when instances/imgaes/volumes no longer exist and self-correct rather than throwing errors)
• mount boot volume and stop cookfs-ing filesystem (especiall for scripting languages) to reduce memory footprint, allow persistence writing to boot vol
• ocaml support using MirageOs

UniK is still experimental! APIs and compatibility is subject to change. We are looking for community support to help identify potential bugs and compatibility issues. Please open a Github issue for any problems you may experience, and join us on our slack channel

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Thanks

UniK would not be possible without the valuable open-source work of projects in the unikernel community. We would like to extend a special thank-you to rumpkernel, deferpanic, and cloudius systems.