
Show HN: Hyper_ – Simple and Secure Container Cloud - scprodigy
https://blog.hyper.sh/introducing-hyper-beta-the-native-container-cloud.html
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grncdr
Just an FYI: the signup form breaks in very obscure ways if one is using an
ad-blocker. It's generally a good idea to never let exceptions from analytics
code break your own logic, since not everybody will (or can) disable their
adblocker.

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robbiemitchell
The site is using Segment to assign registrations a userId. Segment is used
for analytics, yes, but it's really a canonical tracker for everything from
identity to logging.

Assigning userId client-side even before you hit the actual user database
enables data to be sync'd anonymously across services with userId rather than
email address. If you block this from running, yes, you block it from working.

In short, your ad-blocker is being overzealous.

More on this: [https://github.com/superstrong-labs/pre-db-
segment](https://github.com/superstrong-labs/pre-db-segment)

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matzipan
Wait, so is this HyperContainer thing, like... a virtual machine?

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gnepzhao
Basically it uses a hypervisor to launch your docker image, but not a full
blown VM, since there is no guest OS, like ubuntu or coreos in the VM. There
is only one tiny kernel in the HyperContainer to run your Docker app.

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jclulow
So there _is_ still a guest OS inside a hardware virtual machine, it's just a
stripped down OS?

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gnepzhao
Depend on how one define OS. If kernel=OS, then yes, it is stripped down one.
But HyperContainer is different from container OS, like coreos, that it is
just a kernel, no rootfs.

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jclulow
Yes, even if it's "just a kernel", it's still an operating system. It's a
piece of software that runs in the supervisor mode of the CPU, providing
system call services to user applications.

The marketing copy appears, on this basis, to be somewhat misleading. It says
on the site that this is a cloud where "multi-tenant containers can inherently
be run safely side by side on bare metal, instead of being nested in VMs".

I think that, as an industry, we've established that "bare metal" execution of
workloads means _without_ the multi-layered approach of a hypervisor (itself
an OS) running a separate guest OS kernel.

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gnepzhao
Thanks. I remember a blog post that coined a term "virtualized container", but
cannot find the link right now.

I wouldn't use the word VM, as it reminds us of the heavy full-blown images.
It is probably more misleading to say that HyperContainer launches your Docker
image in VMs. But you are right, it is still new and requires efforts to get
people understand.

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Pyxl101
I don't know if I would describe VMs as heavy. But to the extent that they are
heavy, it's because they are an application and OS running on virtualized
(i.e. partially or fully emulated) hardware rather than physical hardware.

[Edit: Removed rest of comment to limit negativity. Thank you for responding
to clarify.]

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gnepzhao
Let me be more clear. The problem of VM is not virtualization (or hypervisor),
the problem is "Machine". For a long time, we try to emulate a complete
machine with a complete "OS" running atop. What Docker really changed is to
make us realize that all we need is the app, not a full OS. Therefore Docker
image is an app-centric package, nothing specific to Linux container. Yes, it
runs with Linux container, but you can also launch it with a hypervisor in
100ms.

Shall we call hypervisor+kernel+Docker image VM? I don't think so. It never
tries to give you a complete machine, neither a full OS. Personally I like
"virtualized container". But the combination of these two words might be more
confusing, given that whenever you see the word "container", you think of
Linux container.

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dap
OS size is just one problem with Virtual Machines. (Much of the OS is idle
unless explicitly used anyway.) Other significant problems include:

\- inefficient use of resources resulting from functionality duplicated in
both the hypervisor and the guest (e.g., two TCP stacks, two filesystem
implementations, two schedulers, and so on). (That's why I asked about this in
a separate comment.)

\- inefficient use of resources resulting from the inability to dynamically
share resources between VMs (e.g., memory and disk typically have to be
statically allocated to VMs, instead of sharing a common pool the way
processes within a single Unix-like system typically do).

\- poor visibility from the hypervisor into the application (i.e.,
observability tools cannot typically cross the hardware-virtualization
boundary).

That's just a partial list.

I think that's why you're seeing pushback from people insisting that these be
called VMs rather than containers: they have all of the above downsides of
VMs, even if the operating system surface area isn't that large.

[edited for formatting]

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jjoe
Hi

I understand boot up completes in under a second but if one needs to setup an
environment to do something useful, it can take several seconds. I guess what
I'm getting at is why would the fast boot matter when one still needs to setup
a basic environment to complete a task?

This is analogous to achieving an artificially low TTFB but actual rendering
doesn't start until several seconds later.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

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gnepzhao
Well, I think you made an excellent point which is hard to argue with.

But, the thumb-rule is that if the startup time is a free lunch, why not
faster?

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arcticfox
This is exactly what I've been waiting for. We're currently on Tutum, and have
60 days to decide whether to migrate to Docker Cloud or a different platform.
This one, on the face of it, would be much better for us.

1) Are there any competitors? 2) Can we be confident in building our business
on this platform? What is the funding and stability situation of Hyper?

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bighead
1) Joyent's Triton

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gnepzhao
Yes, somewhat close. The difference here is that Hyper_ follows the native
Docker interface. So working with it is the same as on your laptop.

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jclulow
Joyent Triton also exposes a Docker API, which you use with an unmodified copy
of the Docker CLI. In that sense, working with Triton is also the same as on
your laptop.

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gnepzhao
Cool, will check it out. Thx!

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amouat
Joyent Triton is a lot more native than hyper; you use the Docker CLI not the
Hyper CLI.

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mtreis86
Just a note, the link to the github project from your website is broken.
([https://blog.hyper.sh/github.com/hyperhq/hyper](https://blog.hyper.sh/github.com/hyperhq/hyper)
404s)

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gnepzhao
Cheers!

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xjimmyshcn
This looks interesting. So it is cloud-version of Docker swarm, right?

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gnepzhao
Yes, it gives you the native docker interface, but remove the cluster mgmt.

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larryme
Excited to see that here comes a way to abandon virtual machines around my
docker containers

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zitterbewegung
I was reading the release text and you misspelled lambda AWS Lamda -> AWS
lambda

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siscia
Maybe I loose it, do you support high availability ? The datacenter is
distributed ?

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gnepzhao
1) Hyper_ offers EBS-like volume and snapshot for your container. You can
failover volumes cross containers 2) Given the instance startup time, you can
program the APIs to do the scaling/HA, etc. 3) Yes, think Hyper_ as a virtual
container host with unlimited capacity, but under the hood, it is still a
cluster of machines.

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colmvp
FYI: The navigation says FETAURES which I assume should be FEATURES

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nathancahill
Why are all of gnepzhao's responses downvoted? dang, is there some sort of
competitor brigading happening here?

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Pyxl101
Edit: (I am going to clear my comment since I'm worried that I'm being
excessively critical. I respect gnepzhao for engaging honestly in this
thread.)

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gnepzhao
Well, the container here refers to HyperContainer or virtualized container.
"run container in VM" is even more misleading, don't you think?

