Slim: OS Kernel Support for a Low-Overhead Container Overlay Network
summary
Slim implements connection-based virtualization that maps virtual container connections to host TCP connections via a user-space Slim router, avoiding per-packet encapsulation. It uses a LD_PRELOAD shim called Slim socket to remain POSIX-compatible and a kernel guard Slim kernel module to block unsafe syscalls. Evaluation shows up to 66% higher throughput and 42% lower latency for an in-memory key-value store and up to 54% CPU reduction; trade-offs include ~106% slower connection setup, limited packet-level policies, and no virtual-NIC tcpdump.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction to containers
- 1:15Container networking issues
- 2:48Overview of Slim
- 3:37Packet-based overhead analysis
- 7:20Kernel-level pipeline issues
- 10:31The Slim architecture
- 14:12Implementation and security
- 17:28Performance benchmarks
- 19:42Limitations and conclusion
- 21:24Q&A session
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