Firecracker 1.3: MicroVM Performance and Security

Introduction

Firecracker 1.3 — MicroVM Performance and Security — was released on August 10, 2021.

Policy usually becomes urgent the first time you need to stop a risky manifest from shipping — or when you’re trying to make standards repeatable across teams.

In this release: Firecracker 1.3 enhances microVM capabilities with improved snapshot support, better performance, and enhanced security for serverless and edge workloads.

Snapshot Improvements

• Incremental snapshots enhancements reduce storage requirements and speed up snapshot operations.
• Snapshot validation improvements ensure snapshot integrity before restoration.
• Cross-platform support enables snapshots to work across different host architectures.
• Performance optimizations reduce time required for snapshot creation and restoration.

Performance Enhancements

1. Boot time improvements reduce microVM startup latency.
2. Memory management optimizations improve efficiency and reduce overhead.
3. I/O performance enhancements reduce latency for storage and network operations.
4. CPU efficiency improvements enable better resource utilization.

Security & Isolation

• Seccomp enhancements provide stronger process isolation.
• Capability dropping improvements ensure minimal privilege for microVMs.
• Network isolation enhancements provide better separation between microVMs.
• Audit logging expansion tracks security-relevant events.

Kubernetes Integration

• Kata Containers integration improvements enable better use of Firecracker in Kubernetes.
• RuntimeClass support simplifies deployment of Firecracker-based workloads.
• Resource management improvements enable better scheduling and resource allocation.
• Observability expansion includes better metrics and logging.

Getting Started

curl -LO https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/releases/download/v1.3.0/firecracker-v1.3.0
chmod +x firecracker-v1.3.0

Summary

Firecracker 1.3 continues to evolve as a leading microVM solution, providing teams with efficient virtualization for modern cloud-native workloads.