Firecracker 1.6: MicroVM Performance and Security Advances

Introduction

Firecracker 1.6, released on November 12, 2023, is most relevant if you’re hardening clusters without turning every deploy into a support ticket. The real value is in rollout safety: tighter controls with fewer false positives, clearer policy outcomes, and smoother day-2 response when something is blocked.

MicroVM Performance

• Boot time optimizations reduce MicroVM startup time.
• Memory usage improvements reduce resource footprint.
• I/O performance enhancements improve disk and network I/O performance.
• Snapshot improvements reduce snapshot creation and restore time.

Security Enhancements

1. Isolation improvements provide better security boundaries between MicroVMs.
2. Kernel security enhancements reduce attack surface.
3. VMM security improvements provide better protection for the virtual machine monitor.
4. Compliance features enable better compliance with security standards.

Container Integration

• Container runtime integration improvements provide better integration with containerd and other runtimes.
• Kubernetes support enables running Firecracker-based workloads on Kubernetes.
• Image support improvements enable better container image compatibility.
• Networking enhancements provide better container networking integration.

Getting Started

# Install Firecracker
curl -LOJ https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/releases/download/v1.6.0/firecracker-v1.6.0-x86_64.tgz
tar -xzf firecracker-v1.6.0-x86_64.tgz

Create a MicroVM:

./firecracker --api-sock /tmp/firecracker.socket --config-file vm-config.json

Summary

Firecracker 1.6 provides teams with powerful lightweight virtualization capabilities for serverless and container workloads.