uIO: Lightweight and Extensible Unikernels
Masanori Misono, Peter Okelmann, Charalampos Mainas, Pramod Bhatotia · 2024
Unikernels specialize operating systems by tailoring the kernel for a specific application at compile time. While the specialized library OS approach provides a smaller OS image-thus improving the bootup process, performance, migration costs, and reliable/trusted computing base---at the same time, unikernels lack run-time extensibility, which is imperative to support "on-demand" auxiliary tasks and tools, e.g., debugging, monitoring, re-configuration, and system management and deployment in a typical cloud environment. Consequently, unikernels present a fundamental trade-off between slimness of the OS image size at the compile time vs. flexibility of supported auxiliary functionality at the run-time.