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Incus has joined LinuxContainers (LXC)

linuxcontainers.org Linux Containers - Incus - Introduction

The umbrella project behind Incus, LXC, LXCFS, Distrobuilder and more.

I stumbled upon this interesting platform and thought I'd share.

Incus provides support for system containers and virtual machines.

When running a system container, Incus simulates a virtual version of a full operating system. To do this, it uses the functionality provided by the kernel running on the host system.

When running a virtual machine, Incus uses the hardware of the host system, but the kernel is provided by the virtual machine. Therefore, virtual machines can be used to run, for example, a different operating system.

You can learn more about the differences between application containers, system containers and virtual machines in our documentation.

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5 comments

  • Containers aside, why would you want to use Incus to run VMs, when you've already got KVM/libvirt? Are there any performance/resource utilization/other advantages to using it?

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    • My best guess would be to have a single point of management for both LXCs and VMs.

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    • LXD/Incus provides a management and automation layer that really makes things work smoothly. With Incus you can create clusters, download, manage and create OS images, run backups and restores, bootstrap things with cloud-init, move containers and VMs between servers (even live sometimes) and those are just a few things you can do with it and not with pure KVM/libvirt.

      Another big advantage is the fact that it provides a unified experience to deal with both containers and VMs, no need to learn two different tools / APIs as the same commands and options will be used to manage both. Even profiles defining storage, network resources and other policies can be shared and applied across both containers and VMs.

      Incus isn't about replacing existing virtualization techniques such as QEMU, KVM and libvirt, it is about augmenting them so they become easier to manage at scale and overall more efficient. It plays on the land of, let's say, Proxmox and I can guarantee you that most people running it today will eventually move to Incus and never look back. It woks way better, true open-source, no bugs, no BS licenses and way less overhead.

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