microVM

Firecracker microVMs provide hardware-level isolation with the sub-125ms startup speeds and low overhead of containers.

MicroVMs redefine workload isolation by stripping away legacy hardware emulation to provide a minimalist execution environment. Firecracker (the open-source VMM built by AWS) launches Linux kernels in under 125ms while maintaining a memory footprint of roughly 5MiB per instance. This lean architecture allows operators to pack thousands of independent environments onto a single bare-metal host, powering massive-scale services like AWS Lambda and Fargate. By focusing strictly on modern virtio devices and a reduced attack surface, microVMs offer the security of a traditional hypervisor without the typical performance penalties: perfect for serverless functions and high-density multi-tenant clouds.

https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/