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  5. Dumb-init vs Microcontainers

Dumb-init vs Microcontainers

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Dumb-init
Dumb-init
Stacks5
Followers19
Votes0
GitHub Stars7.2K
Forks356
Microcontainers
Microcontainers
Stacks4
Followers60
Votes0
GitHub Stars1.6K
Forks138

Dumb-init vs Microcontainers: What are the differences?

What is Dumb-init? A minimal init system for Linux containers, by Yelp. dumb-init runs as PID 1, acting like a simple init system. It launches a single process and then proxies all received signals to a session rooted at that child process. Since your actual process is no longer PID 1, when it receives signals from dumb-init, the default signal handlers will be applied, and your process will behave as you would expect. If your process dies, dumb-init will also die, taking care to clean up any other processes that might still remain.

What is Microcontainers? Tiny, Portable Docker Containers. A Microcontainer contains only the OS libraries and language dependencies required to run an application and the application itself. Nothing more. Rather than starting with everything but the kitchen sink, start with the bare minimum and add dependencies on an as needed basis.

Dumb-init and Microcontainers can be primarily classified as "Container" tools.

Dumb-init and Microcontainers are both open source tools. It seems that Dumb-init with 3.8K GitHub stars and 211 forks on GitHub has more adoption than Microcontainers with 1.56K GitHub stars and 137 GitHub forks.

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Detailed Comparison

Dumb-init
Dumb-init
Microcontainers
Microcontainers

dumb-init runs as PID 1, acting like a simple init system. It launches a single process and then proxies all received signals to a session rooted at that child process. Since your actual process is no longer PID 1, when it receives signals from dumb-init, the default signal handlers will be applied, and your process will behave as you would expect. If your process dies, dumb-init will also die, taking care to clean up any other processes that might still remain.

A Microcontainer contains only the OS libraries and language dependencies required to run an application and the application itself. Nothing more. Rather than starting with everything but the kitchen sink, start with the bare minimum and add dependencies on an as needed basis.

Acts like a simple init system, Runs as PID1 instead of your process
Size — MicroContainers are small. As shown above, without changing any code the image is 22 times smaller than a typical image.;Fast/Easy Distribution — Because the size is so much smaller, it’s much quicker to download the image from a Docker registry (eg: Docker Hub) and therefore it can be distributed to different machines much quicker.;Improved Security — Less code/less programs in the container means less attack surface. And, the base OS can be more secure (more below).
Statistics
GitHub Stars
7.2K
GitHub Stars
1.6K
GitHub Forks
356
GitHub Forks
138
Stacks
5
Stacks
4
Followers
19
Followers
60
Votes
0
Votes
0
Integrations
Docker
Docker
Docker
Docker

What are some alternatives to Dumb-init, Microcontainers?

Kubernetes

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Rancher

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Portainer

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Codefresh

Codefresh

Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.

CAST.AI

CAST.AI

It is an AI-driven cloud optimization platform for Kubernetes. Instantly cut your cloud bill, prevent downtime, and 10X the power of DevOps.

k3s

k3s

Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server.

Flocker

Flocker

Flocker is a data volume manager and multi-host Docker cluster management tool. With it you can control your data using the same tools you use for your stateless applications. This means that you can run your databases, queues and key-value stores in Docker and move them around as easily as the rest of your app.

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