Comment by Imustaskforhelp

Comment by Imustaskforhelp 3 days ago

8 replies

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I have 2 questions which I hope can be answered

Firstly, can there be an easier way to stop a microVM mid execution in this single executable bottlefire format and then rerun that and it would start mid execution. (something akin to how criu does it?)

Secondly, and although this isn't related to your product but rather about microvm and that is if something like microvm could be run in normal cloud infrastructure?

I saw this article (https://blog.alexellis.io/how-to-run-firecracker-without-kvm...) and It mentioned PVM and I was thinking if this can be applied here because then I feel like if I can run a container as a microvm on big cloud and then stop it mid execution and rerun it elsewhere, then I have essentially got an incentive to use spot instances which are (I think) 80% more cheaper and I am just curious about it from a devops side of things.

losfair 3 days ago

> Firstly, can there be an easier way to stop a microVM mid execution in this single executable bottlefire format and then rerun that and it would start mid execution. (something akin to how criu does it?)

Not yet - Firecracker supports snapshotting so this should be doable though!

> if something like microvm could be run in normal cloud infrastructure?

Some cloud providers - like GCP and DigitalOcean - do support nested virtualization, and they work pretty well with Firecracker. Using VM migration to run stable workloads on spot instances sounds very interesting :)

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  • tuananh 3 days ago

    > Some cloud providers - like GCP and DigitalOcean - do support nested virtualization, and they work pretty well with Firecracker. Using VM migration to run stable workloads on spot instances sounds very interesting :)

    not necessarily. you can build custom kernel with pvm[1] and do it on aws.

    [1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/963718/

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    • Imustaskforhelp 3 days ago

      Yes I also came to know across pvm. I feel like doing it on top of aws instances can bring a really nice way of migrating from spot isntances and paying less bills.

      What are your thoughts on the other hand in using criu with docker and then deploying it on aws spot instances, is it possible

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      • tuananh 3 days ago

        > What are your thoughts on the other hand in using criu with docker and then deploying it on aws spot instances, is it possible

        I don't see why not really

        but the last few years, spot has been reclaimed way too often and the price discount is not as good as it used to be (era 2016-2017) so I prefer to use saving plan now. although quite a big portion of our fleet still use spot.

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        • Imustaskforhelp 3 days ago

          hm that was an interesting take, I had seen this youtube video by codedamn [1] on how spot instances are really cheap and had always wondered why people weren't using this, well now I understand that the incentives have changed. Thanks for telling me, I didn't knew it or maybe the creator of that video had created it quite recently (10 months from now isn't that much of a time unless things have changed)

          Video [1] : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hM4ZRIuD5g

          Have things changed quite a lot in 10 months or was it the author maybe overhyping the usecase I suppose.

          I am really wondering but is there any software stack that can work with multi cloud approach the best way. I feel like typescript is really great for such purposes for the most part, I hope that this doesn't get counted as too off topic. I am not a dev ops guy but I just like being frugal and checking different options etc. and I am just wondering what is the best "just works" cloud 2025 without being too much expensive like vercel or netlify.

          Have a nice day!

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    • codethief 3 days ago

      Wow, I didn't know about PVM! So this should finally allow nesting of container/VM sandboxes?

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  • Imustaskforhelp 3 days ago

    I genuinely hope that you can please consider the 1st question regarding snapshotting and its doability in bottlefire's / bake's roadmap.

    Regarding the 2nd question, I feel like something can definitely be crafted that can enable running stable workloads on gcp/digitalocean spot instances and maybe what bake can do is really make the automation aspect of spot instances / VM migration easier...

    Please don't get me wrong, this project looks really cool but I would actually like a first hand response as to (preferably) why this/bake project was created and when/why should someone use this..

    I also have many more questions and I feel like haivng a community place can be really helpful here.

    Although my open source purist heart wishes for you to use matrix, Its also understandable if you use discord. Do note that there are bridges so you could technically have both matrix and discord and bridge them.

    Best wishes for your project.

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