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Welcome to H-Container wiki!

H-Container enables containerized applications, natively compiled for a specific ISA, to runtime migrate (similar to VM migration) across compute nodes featuring CPUs of different ISAs, such as ARM and x86. H-Container takes a natively compiled binary (for Linux) and transforms it into a natively compiled set of binaries, one per ISA. Once a binary is started and checkpointed on a machine, it can be restarted on a machine with a different ISA. Thus, enabling runtime migration of applications (note that live-migration is also supported). H-Container supports not just single applications but also entire containers.

H-Container fully integrates with Docker. However, at least at the time of writing, Docker supports container checkpoint/restart (with CRIU) on a single machine only, checkpoint/restart among different (heterogeneous-ISA) machines is completely manual. This repository provides the tools and instructions to enable Docker container migration.

• Extensive introduction to H-Container
• VEE 2020 paper on ACM
• Demo video on Youtube

How to Start?

The quicker way to start with H-Container is by using our Docker examples. To test H-Container you need an ARM plus x86 setup, either bare-metal (i.e., two different machines), emulated (using QEMU), or cloud-based (e.g., AWS). To run H-Container on AWS using Docker you need to follow the following steps:

• First setup an ARM and an x86 virtual machines
• Second run any of our Docker examples
  • Hello-world (from ARM to x86)
  • Redis (from x86 to ARM)
  • Nginx (from x86 to ARM)

Instructions to run H-Container on bare-metal and QEMU, and without Docker, can be found on the CRIUHET Wiki.

Repositories Organization

Core Components

• Popcorn Compiler “criu” branch https://github.com/systems-nuts/popcorn-compiler/tree/criu
  • How to start https://github.com/systems-nuts/popcorn-compiler/blob/master/README
• CRIU, two different branches based on the usage, for Docker “heterogeneous-simplified” is recommended
  • https://github.com/systems-nuts/criu-het/tree/crit-in-criu (default branch)
  • https://github.com/systems-nuts/criu-het/tree/heterogeneous-simplified
  • How to start https://github.com/systems-nuts/criu-het/wiki
• Docker scripts and demo https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-tutorial

Microbenchmarks

• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-benchmark
• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-micro_benchmark_script

Benchmarks

• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-nginx
• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-game
• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-gzip
• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-redis
• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-lighttpd
• https://github.com/systems-nuts/hcontainer-testscript

Note

• We don't support mcsema at the moment due to fundamental changes in their repos

Contacts

Please contact Antonio Barbalace [email protected], or Tong Xing [email protected]