1.
Erlang on Xen
Mikhail Bortnyk, Amoniac OU

2.
What to know
• XEN

3.
What to know
• XEN - virtualization hypervisor, modified Linux
kernel, isolated domains, paravirtualization support

4.
What to know
• XEN - virtualization hypervisor, modified Linux
kernel, isolated domains, paravirtualization support
• Erlang - functional concurrent programming
language (all you guys know about it, right?)

5.
What to know
• XEN - virtualization hypervisor, modified Linux
kernel, isolated domains, paravirtualization support
• Erlang - functional concurrent programming
language (all you guys know about it, right?)
• Linux - Unix-like operating system created by Linus
Torvalds

6.
Typical application case
Bare
metal

7.
Typical application case
Bare
metal
Operating system

8.
Typical application case
Bare
metal
Operating system
Your application

9.
Wait, everything is
about clouds currently!

10.
Typical cloud application
case
Bare
metal

11.
Typical cloud application
case
Bare
metal
Virtualization hypervisor
HOST OS

12.
Typical cloud application
case
Bare
metal
Virtualization hypervisor
HOST OS
Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS

13.
Typical cloud application
case
Bare
metal
Virtualization hypervisor
HOST OS
Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS
Your application Your application Your application

14.
Looks pretty familiar,
huh?

15.
And anyone is sick on
microservices now

16.
What’s wrong with this?
• Let’s imagine: our app is like, huh, 200 kilobytes

17.
What’s wrong with this?
• Let’s imagine: our app is like, huh, 200 KB
• It doesn’t matter - Linux kernel is ~10 MB

18.
What’s wrong with this?
• Let’s imagine: our app is like, huh, 200 KB
• It doesn’t matter - Linux kernel is ~10 MB
• Typical Linux image is ~ 400 MB

19.
What’s wrong with this?
• Let’s imagine: our app is like, huh, 200 KB
• It doesn’t matter - Linux kernel is ~10 MB
• Typical Linux image is ~ 400 MB
• Multiply this on amount of instances

20.
What’s wrong with this?
• Let’s imagine: our app is like, huh, 200 KB
• It doesn’t matter - Linux kernel is ~10 MB
• Typical Linux image is ~ 400 MB
• Multiply this on amount of instances
• More than 500MB overhead for 200 KB application

21.
What’s wrong with this?
• Let’s imagine: our app is like, huh, 200 KB
• It doesn’t matter - Linux kernel is ~10 MB
• Typical Linux image is ~ 400 MB
• Multiply this on amount of instances
• More than 500MB overhead for 200 KB application
• Overheating, war for resources, depression, death

22.
We all gonna die

23.
Erlang on Xen to the
rescue!

24.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating
system

25.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating
system
• Actually named LING

26.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating
system
• Actually named LING
• Developed by Cloudozer

27.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating
system
• Actually named LING
• Developed by Cloudozer
• Performed in C and Erlang

28.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating
system
• Actually named LING
• Developed by Cloudozer
• Performed in C and Erlang
• Footprint is pretty small: 1.2 MB of low-level code + 2
MB of C stack + 2 MB of imported modules + 2 MB of
network buffers = ~ 8 MB

29.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating system
• Actually named LING
• Developed by Cloudozer
• Performed in C and Erlang
• Footprint is pretty small: 1.2 MB of low-level code + 2 MB
of C stack + 2 MB of imported modules + 2 MB of network
buffers = ~ 8 MB
• Minimal memory requirement to run: 20 MB per guest

30.
Erlang on XEN
• Erlang VM running on XEN guest without operating system
• Actually named LING
• Developed by Cloudozer
• Performed in C and Erlang
• Footprint is pretty small: 1.2 MB of low-level code + 2 MB of C stack
+ 2 MB of imported modules + 2 MB of network buffers = ~ 8 MB
• Minimal memory requirement to run: 20 MB per guest
• Spawns pretty fast - from 0.2 to 1 s

31.
Some little demo
(what can go wrong,
srsly?)

32.
What to hack
• Code is open-sourced (look into for license details)

33.
What to hack
• Code is open-sourced (look into for license details)
• Teach it to work with Elixir (actually, lingex)

34.
What to hack
• Code is open-sourced (look into for license details)
• Teach it to work with Elixir (actually, lingex)
• Make LING alive again! (last commit - Oct 2015)

35.
What to hack
• Code is open-sourced (look into for license details)
• Teach it to work with Elixir (actually, lingex)
• Make LING alive again! (last commit - Oct 2015)
• Just have fun with some hacking and getting into
internals of Erlang and BEAM

36.
Thank you!

37.
Questions?