NANOVMS, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF192-005

Description

Unikernels have long predicted to be the next generation of “cloud software� for their performance, security and consolidation points, however, their low level nature and need for re-compilation have kept massive adoption from proceeding. NanoVMs has created a method of producing unikernels from normal linux binaries that has the potential to dramatically change how server side software is provisioned. Unikernels can boot faster than any known system today - in < 5ms and can run much faster at run-time. Many researchers can run databases such as cassandra and mysql up to 20%. The reason is their focus on being a single-process system - meaning all the resources available in a given virtual machine are dedicated to running one program versus a linux system that has hundreds of programs pre-installed all running. Unikernels are noted for their security properties of not having a shell, not having the notion of usernames/passwords, embracing the single process model disallowing arbitrary programs from running and their reduction in attack surface.