Virtual Machines (VMs) are used extensively in the cloud. The underlying hypervisors allow hardware resources to be split into multiple virtual units which enables server consolidation, fault containment and resource management. However, VMs with traditional architecture introduce heavy overhead and reduce application performance. Containers are becoming popular options for running applications, yet such a solution raises security concerns due to weaker isolation than VMs. We are at the point of container and traditional virtualization convergence where lightweight hypervisors are implemented and integrated into the container ecosystem in order to maximize the benefits of VM isolation and container performance.
