
Ask HN: Are containers really more light weight than virtual machines? - andrewstuart
I was talking to an expert on containers and asked them &quot;what is the real benefit of containers over VMs&quot; and he said confidently &quot;containers are more light weight than VMs&quot;.<p>But I wonder is that true?<p>Is &quot;weight&quot; the core value of containers over VMs?  And are containers more light weight anyway? My experience with VMs is that small ones are only 25MB or so - seems pretty light weight to me.
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bradknowles
Depends on how they are built.

If you build a container with everything including the kitchen sync, then that
will be pretty heavy.

If you really strip down your VM, you can make it very light.

But, by default, your average container (properly built) will probably be
lighter in weight than your average VM.

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db48x
"Weight" in this context refers to execution and memory overhead, not file
size.

