Realizing Linux Containers (LXC)

1. Realizing Linux Containers (LXC) Building Blocks, Underpinnings & Motivations Boden Russell – IBM Global Technology Services (brussell@us.ibm.com)

2. Definitions  Linux Containers (LXC for LinuX Containers) are lightweight virtual machines (VMs) which are realized using features provided by a modern Linux kernel – VMs without the hypervisor  Containerization of: – (Linux) Operating Systems – Single or multiple applications  LXC as a technology not to be confused with LXC (tools) which are a user space toolset for creating & managing Linux Containers  From wikipedia: LXC (LinuX Containers) is an operating system–level virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a single control host… LXC provides operating system-level virtualization not via a virtual machine, but rather provides a virtual environment that has its own process and network space. 3/11/2014 2

3. Why LXC  Provision in seconds / milliseconds  Near bare metal runtime performance  VM-like agility – it’s still “virtualization”  Flexibility – Containerize a “system” – Containerize “application(s)”  Lightweight – Just enough Operating System (JeOS) – Minimal per container penalty  Open source – free – lower TCO  Supported with OOTB modern Linux kernel  Growing in popularity 3/11/2014 3 “Linux Containers as poised as the next VM in our modern Cloud era…” Manual VM LXC Provision Time Days Minutes Seconds / ms linpack performance @ 45000 0 50 100 150 200 250 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 BM vcpus GFlops Google trends - LXC Google trends - docker

4. Hypervisors vs. Linux Containers Hardware Operating System Hypervisor Virtual Machine Operating System Bins / libs App App Virtual Machine Operating System Bins / libs App App Hardware Hypervisor Virtual Machine Operating System Bins / libs App App Virtual Machine Operating System Bins / libs App App Hardware Operating System Container Bins / libs App App Container Bins / libs App App Type 1 Hypervisor Type 2 Hypervisor Linux Containers 3/11/2014 4 Containers share the OS kernel of the host and thus are lightweight. However, each container must have the same OS kernel. Containers are isolated, but share OS and, where appropriate, libs / bins.

5. LXC Technology Stack  LXCs are built on modern kernel features – cgroups; limits, prioritization, accounting & control – namespaces; process based resource isolation – chroot; apparent root FS directory – Linux Security Modules (LSM); Mandatory Access Control (MAC)  User space interfaces for kernel functions  LXC tools – Tools to isolate process(es) virtualizing kernel resources  LXC commoditization – Dead easy LXC – LXC virtualization  Orchestration & management – Scheduling across multiple hosts – Monitoring – Uptime 3/11/2014 5

6. Linux cgroups  History – Work started in 2006 by google engineers – Merged into upstream 2.6.24 kernel due to wider spread LXC usage – A number of features still a WIP  Functionality – Access; which devices can be used per cgroup – Resource limiting; memory, CPU, device accessibility, block I/O, etc. – Prioritization; who gets more of the CPU, memory, etc. – Accounting; resource usage per cgroup – Control; freezing & check pointing – Injection; packet tagging  Usage – cgroup functionality exposed as “resource controllers” (aka “subsystems”) – Subsystems mounted on FS – Top-level subsystem mount is the root cgroup; all procs on host – Directories under top-level mounts created per cgroup – Procs put in tasks file for group assignment – Interface via read / write pseudo files in group 3/11/2014 6

7. Linux cgroup Subsystems  cgroups provided via kernel modules – Not always loaded / provided by default – Locate and load with modprobe  Some features tied to kernel version  See: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroups/ 3/11/2014 7 Subsystem Tunable Parameters blkio - Weighted proportional block I/O access. Group wide or per device. - Per device hard limits on block I/O read/write specified as bytes per second or IOPS per second. cpu - Time period (microseconds per second) a group should have CPU access. - Group wide upper limit on CPU time per second. - Weighted proportional value of relative CPU time for a group. cpuset - CPUs (cores) the group can access. - Memory nodes the group can access and migrate ability. - Memory hardwall, pressure, spread, etc. devices - Define which devices and access type a group can use. freezer - Suspend/resume group tasks. memory - Max memory limits for the group (in bytes). - Memory swappiness, OOM control, hierarchy, etc.. hugetlb - Limit HugeTLB size usage. - Per cgroup HugeTLB metrics. net_cls - Tag network packets with a class ID. - Use tc to prioritize tagged packets. net_prio - Weighted proportional priority on egress traffic (per interface).

8. Linux cgroups FS Layout 3/11/2014 8

10. Linux cgroups: CPU Usage  Use CPU shares (and other controls) to prioritize jobs / containers  Carry out complex scheduling schemes  Segment host resources  Adhere to SLAs 3/11/2014 10

11. Linux cgroups: CPU Pinning  Pin containers / jobs to CPU cores  Carry out complex scheduling schemes  Reduce core switching costs  Adhere to SLAs 3/11/2014 11

12. Linux cgroups: Device Access  Limit device visibility; isolation  Implement device access controls – Secure sharing  Segment device access  Device whitelist / blacklist 3/11/2014 12

13. LXC Realization: Linux cgroups  cgroup created per container (in each cgroup subsystem)  Prioritization, access, limits per container a la cgroup controls  Per container metrics (bean counters) 3/11/2014 13

14. Linux namespaces  History – Initial kernel patches in 2.4.19 – Recent 3.8 patches for user namespace support – A number of features still a WIP  Functionality – Provide process level isolation of global resources • MNT (mount points, file systems, etc.) • PID (process) • NET (NICs, routing, etc.) • IPC (System V IPC resources) • UTS (host & domain name) • USER (UID + GID) – Process(es) in namespace have illusion they are the only processes on the system – Generally constructs exist to permit “connectivity” with parent namespace  Usage – Construct namespace(s) of desired type – Create process(es) in namespace (typically done when creating namespace) – If necessary, initialize “connectivity” to parent namespace – Process(es) in name space internally function as if they are only proc(s) on system 3/11/2014 14

15. Linux namespaces: Conceptual Overview 3/11/2014 15

16. Linux namespaces: MNT namespace  Isolates the mount table – per namespace mounts  mount / unmount operations isolated to namespace  Mount propagation – Shared; mount objects propagate events to one another – Slave; one mount propagates events to another, but not vice versa – Private; no event propagation (default)  Unbindable mount forbids bind mounting itself  Various tools / APIs support the mount namespace such as the mount command – Options to make shared, private, slave, etc. – Mount with namespace support  Typically used with chroot or pivot_root for effective root FS isolation 3/11/2014 16 “global” (i.e. root) namespace “green” namespace “red” namespace MNT NS / /proc /mnt/fsrd /mnt/fsrw /mnt/cdrom /run2 MNT NS / /proc /mnt/greenfs /mnt/fsrw /mnt/cdrom MNT NS / /proc /mnt/cdrom /redns

17. Linux namespaces: UTS namespace  Per namespace – Hostname – NIS domain name  Reported by commands such as hostname  Processes in namespace can change UTS values – only reflected in the child namespace  Allows containers to have their own FQDN 3/11/2014 17 “global” (i.e. root) namespace “green” namespace “red” namespace UTS NS globalhost rootns.com UTS NS greenhost greenns.org UTS NS redhost redns.com

18. Linux namespaces: PID namespace  Per namespace PID mapping – PID 1 in namespace not the same as PID 1 in parent namespace – No PID conflicts between namespaces – Effectively 2 PIDs; the PID in the namespace and the PID outside the namespace  Permits migrating namespace processes between hosts while keeping same PID  Only processes in the namespace are visible within the namespace (visibility limited) 3/11/2014 18 “global” (i.e. root) namespace “green” namespace “red” namespace PID NS PID COMMAND 1 /sbin/init 2 [kthreadd] 3 [ksoftirqd] 4 [cpuset] 5 /sbin/udevd PID NS PID COMMAND 1 /bin/bash 2 /bin/vim PID NS PID COMMAND 1 /bin/bash 2 python 3 node

19. Linux namespaces: IPC namespace  System V IPC object & POSIX message queue isolation between namespaces – Semaphores – Shared memory – Message queues  Parent namespace connectivity – Signals – Memory polling – Sockets (if no NET namespace) – Files / file descriptors (if no mount namespace) – Events over pipe pair 3/11/2014 19 “global” (i.e. root) namespace “green” namespace “red” namespace IPC NS SHMID OWNER 32452 root 43321 boden SEMID OWNER 0 root 1 boden IPC NS SHMID OWNER SEMID OWNER 0 root IPC NS SHMID OWNER SEMID OWNER MSQID OWNER

20. Linux namespaces: NET namespace  Per namespace network objects – Network devices (eths) – Bridges – Routing tables – IP address(es) – ports – Etc  Various commands support network namespace such as ip  Connectivity to other namespaces – veths – create veth pair, move one inside the namespace and configure – Acts as a pipe between the 2 namespaces  LXCs can have their own IPs, routes, bridges, etc. 3/11/2014 20 “global” (i.e. root) namespace “green” namespace “red” namespace NET NS lo: UNKNOWN… eth0: UP… eth1: UP… br0: UP… app1 IP:5000 app2 IP:6000 app3 IP:7000 NET NS lo: UNKNOWN… eth0: UP… app1 IP:1000 app2 IP:7000 NET NS lo: UNKNOWN… eth0: DOWN… eth1: UP app1 IP:7000 app2 IP:9000

21. Linux namespaces: USER namespace  A long work in progress – still development for XFS and other FS support – Significant security impacts – A handful of security holes already found + fixed  Two major features provided: – Map UID / GID from outside the container to UID / GID inside the container – Permit non-root users to launch LXCs – Distro’s rolling out phased support, with UID / GID mapping typically 1st  First process in USER namespace has full CAPs; perform initializations before other processes are created – No CAPs in parent namespace  UID / GID map can be pre-configured via FS  Eventually USER namespace will mitigate many perceived LXC security concerns 3/11/2014 21 “global” (i.e. root) namespace “green” namespace “red” namespace USER NS root 0:0 ntp 104:109 Mysql 105:110 boden 106:111 USER NS root 0:0 app 106:111 USER NS root 0:0 app 104:109

22. LXC Realization: Linux namespaces 3/11/2014 22  A set of namespaces created for the container  Container process(es) “executed” in the namespace set  Process(es) in the container have isolated view of resources  Connectivity to parent where needed (via lxc tooling)

23. Linux namespaces & cgroups: Availability 3/11/2014 23 Note: user namespace support in upstream kernel 3.8+, but distributions rolling out phased support: - Map LXC UID/GID between container and host - Non-root LXC creation

24. Linux chroots  Changes apparent root directory for process and children – Search paths – Relative directories – Etc  Using chroot can be escaped given proper capabilities, thus pivot_root is often used instead – chroot; points the processes file system root to new directory – pivot_root; detaches the new root and attaches it to process root directory  Often used when building system images – Chroot to temp directory – Download and install packages in chroot – Compress chroot as a system root FS  LXC realization – Bind mount container root FS (image) – Launch (unshare or clone) LXC init process in a new MNT namespace – pivot_root to the bind mount (root FS) 3/11/2014 24

25. Linux chroot vs pivot_root 3/11/2014 25  Using pivot_root with MNT namespace addresses escaping chroot concerns  The pivot_root target directory becomes the “new root FS”

26. LXC Realization: Images LXC images provide a flexible means to deliver only what you need – lightweight and minimal footprint  Basic constraints – Same architecture – Same endian – Linux’ish Operating System; you can run different Linux distros on same host  Image types – System; images intended to virtualize Operating System(s) – standard distro root FS less the kernel – Application; images intended to virtualize application(s) – only package apps + dependencies (aka JeOS – Just enough Operating System)  Bind mount host libs / bins into LXC to share host resources  Container image init process – Container init command provided on invocation – can be an application or a full fledged init process – Init script customized for image – skinny SysVinit, upstart, etc. – Reduces overhead of lxc start-up and runtime foot print  Various tools to build images – SuSE Kiwi – Debootstrap – Etc.  LXC tooling options often include numerous image templates 3/11/2014 26

27. Linux Security Modules & MAC  Linux Security Modules (LSM) – kernel modules which provide a framework for Mandatory Access Control (MAC) security implementations  MAC vs DAC – In MAC, admin (user or process) assigns access controls to subject / initiator • Most MAC implementations provide the notion of profiles • Profiles define access restrictions and are said to “confine” a subject – In DAC, resource owner (user) assigns access controls to individual resources  Existing LSM implementations include: AppArmor, SELinux, GRSEC, etc. 3/11/2014 27

28. Linux Capabilities & Other Security Measures  Linux capabilities – Per process privileges which define operational (sys call) access – Typically checked based on process EUID and EGID – Root processes (i.e. EUID = GUID = 0) bypass capability checks  Capabilities can be assigned to LXC processes to restrict  Other LXC security mitigations – Reduce shared FS access using RO bind mounts – Keep Linux kernel up to date – User namespaces in 3.8+ kernel • Allow to launch containers as non-root user • Map UID / GID inside / outside of container 3/11/2014 28

29. LXC Realization 3/11/2014 29

30. LXC Tooling  LXC is not a kernel feature – it’s a technology enabled via kernel features – User space tooling required to manage LXCs effectively  Numerous toolsets exist – Then: add-on patches to upstream kernel due to slow kernel acceptance – Now: upstream LXC feature support is growing – less need for patches  More popular GNU Linux toolsets include libvirt-lxc and lxc (tools) – OpenVZ is likely the most mature toolset, but it requires kernel patches – Note: I would consider docker a commoditization of LXC  Non-GNU Linux based LXC – Solaris zones – BSD jails – Illumos / SmartOS (solaris derivatives) – Etc. 3/11/2014 30

31. LXC Industry Tooling 3/11/2014 31

32. Libvirt-lxc  Perhaps the simplest to learn through a familiar virsh interface  Libvirt provides LXC support by connecting to lxc:///  Many virsh commands work • virsh -c lxc:/// define sample.xml • virsh –c lxc:/// start sample • virsh –c lxc:/// console sample • virsh –c lxc:/// shutdown sample • virsh –c lxc:/// undefine sample  No snapshotting, templates…  OpenStack support since Grizzly  No VNC  No Cinder support in Grizzly  Config drive not supported  Alternative means of accessing metadata  Attached disk rather than http calls 3/11/2014 32 <domain type='lxc'> <name>sample</name> <memory>32768</memory> <os> <type>exe</type> <init>/init</init> </os> <vcpu>1</vcpu> <clock offset='utc'/> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>destroy</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/libexec/libvirt_lxc</emulator> <filesystem type='mount'> <source dir='/opt/vm-1-root'/> <target dir='/'/> </filesystem> <interface type='network'> <source network='default'/> </interface> <console type='pty' /> </devices> </domain>

33. LXC (tools)  A little more functionality  Supported by the major distributions  LXC 1.0 recently released – Cloning supported: lxc-clone – Templates… btrfs – lxc-create -t ubuntu -n CN creates a new ubuntu container • “template” is downloaded from Ubuntu • Some support for Fedora <= 14 • Debian is supported – lxc-start -d -n CN starts the container – lxc-destroy -n CN destroys the container – /etc/lxc/lxc.conf has default settings – /var/lib/lxc/CN is the default place for each container 3/11/2014 33

34. LXC Commoditization: docker  Young project with great vibrancy in the industry  Currently based on unmodified LXC – but the goal is to make it dirt easy  As of March 10th, 2014 at v0.9. Monthly releases, 1.0 should be ready for production use  What docker adds to LXC – Portable deployment across machines • In Cloud terms, think of LXC as the hypervisor and docker as the Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) and the provision engine • Docker images can run unchanged on any platform supporting docker – Application-centric • User facing function geared towards application deployment, not VM analogs [!] – Automatic build • Create containers from build files • Builders can use chef, maven, puppet, etc. – Versioning support • Think of git for docker containers • Only delta of base container is tracked – Component re-use • Any container can be used as a base, specialized and saved – Sharing • Support for public/private repositories of containers – Tools • CLI / REST API for interacting with docker • Vendors adding tools daily  Docker containers are self contained – no more “dependency hell” 3/11/2014 34

35. Docker vs. LXC vs. Hypervisor 3/11/2014 35

36. Docker: LXC Virtualization? 3/11/2014 36  Docker decouples the LXC provider from the operations – LXC provider agnostic  Docker “images” run anywhere docker is supported – Portability

37. LXC Orchestration & Management  Docker & libvirt-lxc in OpenStack – Manage containers heterogeneously with traditional VMs… but not w/the level of support & features we might like  CoreOS – Zero-touch admin Linux distro with docker images as the unit of operation – Centralized key/value store to coordinate distributed environment  Various other 3rd party apps – Maestro for docker – Shipyard for docker – Fleet for CoreOS – Etc.  LXC migration – Container migration via criu  But… – Still no great way to tie all virtual resources together with LXC – e.g. storage + networking • IMO; an area which needs focus for LXC to become more generally applicable 3/11/2014 37

38. Docker in OpenStack  Introduced in Havana – A nova driver to integrate with docker REST API – A Glance translator to integrate containers with Glance • A docker container which implements a docker registry API  The claim is that docker will become a “group A” hypervisor – In it’s current form it’s effectively a “tech preview” 3/11/2014 38

39. LXC Evaluation  Goal: validate the promise with an eye towards practical applicability  Dimensions evaluated: – Runtime performance benefits – Density / footprint – Workload isolation – Ease of use and tooling – Cloud Integration – Security – Ease of use / feature set NOTE: tests performed in a passive manner – deeper analysis warrented. 3/11/2014 39

40. Runtime Performance Benefits - CPU  Tested using libvirt lxc on Ubuntu 13.10 using linpack 11.1  Cpuset was used to limit the number of CPUs that the containers could use  The performance overhead falls within the error of measurement of this test  Actual bare metal performance is actually lower than some container results 3/11/2014 40 linpack performance @ 45000 0 50 100 150 200 250 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 BM vcpus GFlops 220.77 Bare metal220.5 @32 vcpu 220.9 @ 31 vcpu

41. Runtime Performance Benefits – I/O  I/O Tests using libvirt lxc show a < 1 % degradation  Tested with a pass-through mount 3/11/2014 41 Sync read I/O test Rw=Write Size=1024m Bs=128mb direct=1 sync=1 Sync write I/O test Rw=Write Size=1024m Bs=128mb direct=1 sync=1 I/O throughput 1711.2 1724.9 1626.4 1633.4 0 500 1000 1500 2000 lxc write bare metal write lxc read bare metal read test MB/s Series1

42. Runtime Performance Benefits – Block I/O  Tested with [standard] AUFS 3/11/2014 42

43. Density & Footprint – libvirt-lxc 3/11/2014 43 Starting 500 containers Mon Nov 11 13:38:49 CST 2013 ... all threads done in 157 (sequential I/O bound) Stopping 500 containers Mon Nov 11 13:42:20 CST 2013 ... all threads done in 162 Active memory delta: 417.2 KB Starting 1000 containers Mon Nov 11 13:59:19 CST 2013 ... all threads done in 335 Stopping 1000 containers Mon Nov 11 14:14:26 CST 2013 ... all threads done in 339 Active memory delta: 838.4KB Using libvirt lxc on RHEL 6.4, we found that empty container overhead was just 840 bytes. A container could be started in about 330ms, which was an I/O bound process This represents the lower limit of lxc footprint Containers ran /bin/sh

44. Density & Footprint – Docker  In this test, we created 150 Docker containers with CentOS, started apache & then removed them  Average footprint was ~10MB per container  Average start time was 240ms  Serially booting 150 containers which run apache – Takes on average 36 seconds – Consumes about 2 % of the CPU – Negligible HDD space – Spawns around 225 processes for create – Around 1.5 GB of memory ~ 10 MB per container – Expect faster results once docker addresses performance topics in the next few months  Serially destroying 150 containers running apache – On average takes 9 seconds – We would expect destroy to be faster – likely a docker bug and will triage with the docker community 3/11/2014 44 Container Creation Container Deletion I/O profile CPU profile

45. Workload Isolation: Examples  Using the blkio cgroup (lxc.cgroup.blkio.throttle.read_bps_device) to cap the I/O of a container  Both the total bps and iops_device on read / write could be capped  Better async BIO support in kernel 3.10+  We used fio with oflag=sync, direct to test the ability to cap the reads: – With limit set to 6 MB / second READ: io=131072KB, aggrb=6147KB/s, minb=6295KB/s, maxb=6295KB/s, mint=21320msec, maxt=21320msec – With limit set to 60 MB / second READ: io=131072KB, aggrb=61134KB/s, minb=62601KB/s, maxb=62601KB/s, mint=2144msec, maxt=2144msec – No read limit READ: io=131072KB, aggrb=84726KB/s, minb=86760KB/s, maxb=86760KB/s, mint=1547msec, maxt=1547msec 3/11/2014 45

46. OpenStack VM Operations 3/11/2014 46 NOTE: orchestration / management overheads cap LXC performance

47. Who’s Using LXC  Google app engine & infra is said to be using some form of LXC  RedHat OpenShift  dotCloud (now docker inc)  CloudFoundry (early versions)  Rackspace Cloud Databases – Outperforms AWS (Xen) according to perf results  Parallels Virtuozzo (commercial product)  Etc.. 3/11/2014 47

48. LXC Gaps There are gaps…  Lack of industry tooling / support  Live migration still a WIP  Full orchestration across resources (compute / storage / networking)  Fears of security  Not a well known technology… yet  Integration with existing virtualization and Cloud tooling  Not much / any industry standards  Missing skillset  Slower upstream support due to kernel dev process  Etc. 3/11/2014 48

49. LXC: Use Cases For Traditional VMs There are still use cases where traditional VMs are warranted.  Virtualization of non Linux based OSs – Windows – AIX – Etc.  LXC not supported on host  VM requires unique kernel setup which is not applicable to other VMs on the host (i.e. per VM kernel config)  Etc. 3/11/2014 49

50. LXC Recommendations  Public & private Clouds – Increase VM density 2-3x – Accommodate Big Data & HPC type applications – Move the support of Linux distros to containers  PaaS & managed services – Realize “as a Service” and managed services using LXC  Operations management – Ease management + increase agility of bare metal components  DevOps  Development & test – Sandboxes – Dev / test envs – Etc.  If you are just starting with LXC and don’t have in-depth skillset – Start with LXC for private solutions (trusted code) 3/11/2014 50

51. LXC Resources  https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroups/  http://www.blaess.fr/christophe/2012/01/07/linux-3-2-cfs-cpu-bandwidth-english-version/  http://atmail.com/kb/2009/throttling-bandwidth/  https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Resource_Management_Guide/ch- Subsystems_and_Tunable_Parameters.html  http://www.janoszen.com/2013/02/06/limiting-linux-processes-cgroups-explained/  http://www.mattfischer.com/blog/?p=399  http://oakbytes.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/cgroup-cpu-allocation-cpu-shares-examples/  http://fritshoogland.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/throttling-io-with-linux/  https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/  https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-mount-namespaces/  http://blog.endpoint.com/2012/01/linux-unshare-m-for-per-process-private.html  http://timothysc.github.io/blog/2013/02/22/perprocess/  http://www.evolware.org/?p=293  http://s3hh.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/user-namespaces-available-to-play/  http://libvirt.org/drvlxc.html  https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/lxc.html  https://linuxcontainers.org/  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor  http://linux.die.net/man/7/capabilities  http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/config-reference/content/lxc.html  https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Docker  https://www.docker.io/  http://marceloneves.org/papers/pdp2013-containers.pdf  http://openvz.org/Main_Page  http://criu.org/Main_Page 3/11/2014 51

Realizing Linux Containers (LXC)

Realizing Linux Containers (LXC)

Realizing Linux Containers (LXC)

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