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Containerd Brings More Container Runtime Options for Kubernetes

Authors: Lantao Liu (Google), and Mike Brown (IBM)

Update: Kubernetes support for Docker via dockershim is now deprecated. For more information, read the deprecation notice. You can also discuss the deprecation via a dedicated GitHub issue.

A container runtime is software that executes containers and manages container images on a node. Today, the most widely known container runtime is Docker, but there are other container runtimes in the ecosystem, such as rkt, containerd, and lxd. Docker is by far the most common container runtime used in production Kubernetes environments, but Docker’s smaller offspring, containerd, may prove to be a better option. This post describes using containerd with Kubernetes.

Kubernetes 1.5 introduced an internal plugin API named Container Runtime Interface (CRI) to provide easy access to different container runtimes. CRI enables Kubernetes to use a variety of container runtimes without the need to recompile. In theory, Kubernetes could use any container runtime that implements CRI to manage pods, containers and container images.

Over the past 6 months, engineers from Google, Docker, IBM, ZTE, and ZJU have worked to implement CRI for containerd. The project is called cri-containerd, which had its feature complete v1.0.0-alpha.0 release on September 25, 2017. With cri-containerd, users can run Kubernetes clusters using containerd as the underlying runtime without Docker installed.

containerd

Containerd is an OCI compliant core container runtime designed to be embedded into larger systems. It provides the minimum set of functionality to execute containers and manages images on a node. It was initiated by Docker Inc. and donated to CNCF in March of 2017. The Docker engine itself is built on top of earlier versions of containerd, and will soon be updated to the newest version. Containerd is close to a feature complete stable release, with 1.0.0-beta.1 available right now.

Containerd has a much smaller scope than Docker, provides a golang client API, and is more focused on being embeddable.The smaller scope results in a smaller codebase that’s easier to maintain and support over time, matching Kubernetes requirements as shown in the following table:

Containerd Scope (In/Out)Kubernetes Requirement
Container Lifecycle ManagementInContainer Create/Start/Stop/Delete/List/Inspect (✔️)
Image ManagementInPull/List/Inspect (✔️)
NetworkingOut No concrete network solution. User can setup network namespace and put containers into it.Kubernetes networking deals with pods, rather than containers, so container runtimes should not provide complex networking solutions that don't satisfy requirements. (✔️)
VolumesOut, No volume management. User can setup host path, and mount it into container.Kubernetes manages volumes. Container runtimes should not provide internal volume management that may conflict with Kubernetes. (✔️)
Persistent Container LoggingOut, No persistent container log. Container STDIO is provided as FIFOs, which can be redirected/decorated as is required.Kubernetes has specific requirements for persistent container logs, such as format and path etc. Container runtimes should not  persist an unmanageable container log. (✔️)
MetricsIn Containerd provides container and snapshot metrics as part of the API.Kubernetes expects container runtime to provide container metrics (CPU, Memory, writable layer size, etc.) and image filesystem usage (disk, inode usage, etc.). (✔️)
Overall, from a technical perspective, containerd is a very good alternative container runtime for Kubernetes.

cri-containerd

Cri-containerd is exactly that: an implementation of CRI for containerd. It operates on the same node as the Kubelet and containerd. Layered between Kubernetes and containerd, cri-containerd handles all CRI service requests from the Kubelet and uses containerd to manage containers and container images. Cri-containerd manages these service requests in part by forming containerd service requests while adding sufficient additional function to support the CRI requirements.

Compared with the current Docker CRI implementation (dockershim), cri-containerd eliminates an extra hop in the stack, making the stack more stable and efficient.

Architecture

Cri-containerd uses containerd to manage the full container lifecycle and all container images. As also shown below, cri-containerd manages pod networking via CNI (another CNCF project).

Let’s use an example to demonstrate how cri-containerd works for the case when Kubelet creates a single-container pod:

  1. Kubelet calls cri-containerd, via the CRI runtime service API, to create a pod;
  2. cri-containerd uses containerd to create and start a special pause container (the sandbox container) and put that container inside the pod’s cgroups and namespace (steps omitted for brevity);
  3. cri-containerd configures the pod’s network namespace using CNI;
  4. Kubelet subsequently calls cri-containerd, via the CRI image service API, to pull the application container image;
  5. cri-containerd further uses containerd to pull the image if the image is not present on the node;
  6. Kubelet then calls cri-containerd, via the CRI runtime service API, to create and start the application container inside the pod using the pulled container image;
  7. cri-containerd finally calls containerd to create the application container, put it inside the pod’s cgroups and namespace, then to start the pod’s new application container. After these steps, a pod and its corresponding application container is created and running.

Status

Cri-containerd v1.0.0-alpha.0 was released on Sep. 25, 2017.

It is feature complete. All Kubernetes features are supported.

All CRI validation tests have passed. (A CRI validation is a test framework for validating whether a CRI implementation meets all the requirements expected by Kubernetes.)

All regular node e2e tests have passed. (The Kubernetes test framework for testing Kubernetes node level functionalities such as managing pods, mounting volumes etc.)

To learn more about the v1.0.0-alpha.0 release, see the project repository.

Try it Out

For a multi-node cluster installer and bring up steps using ansible and kubeadm, see this repo link.

For creating a cluster from scratch on Google Cloud, see Kubernetes the Hard Way.

For a custom installation from release tarball, see this repo link.

For a installation with LinuxKit on a local VM, see this repo link.

Next Steps

We are focused on stability and usability improvements as our next steps.

  • Stability:

    • Set up a full set of Kubernetes integration test in the Kubernetes test infrastructure on various OS distros such as Ubuntu, COS (Container-Optimized OS) etc.
    • Actively fix any test failures and other issues reported by users.

  • Usability:

    • Improve the user experience of crictl. Crictl is a portable command line tool for all CRI container runtimes. The goal here is to make it easy to use for debug and development scenarios.
    • Integrate cri-containerd with kube-up.sh, to help users bring up a production quality Kubernetes cluster using cri-containerd and containerd.
    • Improve our documentation for users and admins alike.

We plan to release our v1.0.0-beta.0 by the end of 2017.

Contribute

Cri-containerd is a Kubernetes incubator project located at https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/cri-containerd. Any contributions in terms of ideas, issues, and/or fixes are welcome. The getting started guide for developers is a good place to start for contributors.

Community

Cri-containerd is developed and maintained by the Kubernetes SIG-Node community. We’d love to hear feedback from you. To join the community: