URUNC - A Unikernel Container Runtime for Serverless Computing

Explore a 40-minute conference talk that delves into URUNC, a unikernel container runtime, and its potential to revolutionize serverless computing. Learn about the challenges faced by serverless providers and users, including infrastructure maintenance overheads and the need for flexibility, isolation, and programming freedom. Discover how unikernels offer an ideal solution for short-lived tasks in busy clusters, providing easier scalability and inherent immutability compared to traditional VMs or sandboxed containers. Gain insights into the presenters' efforts to bridge the deployment gap between containers and unikernels through the introduction of urunc, a container runtime that spawns unikernels, and bima, a tool for "containerizing" unikernels into OCI images. Understand how these innovations offer a secure and efficient solution for modern serverless workloads, enabling cloud-native deployment and management.