Session

Wasm and Containers Deep Dive

Djordje Lukic - Docker

Let’s deep dive into the exciting technologies (new and old) that make it possible to run a WebAssembly module locally using Docker and containerd, and then in the cloud on a Kubernetes cluster.

Bringing containers and WebAssembly closer will benefit everyone. WebAssembly can make use of all the existing infrastructure for building and delivering the workloads with the help of the OCI standard. And adding WebAssembly features to container orchestrators makes them a great choice for running workloads where performance and a small footprint is paramount.

In this talk we will take a look at what it takes for a container runtime to be able to run a Wasm module, and the benefits of this approach including faster startup times, security guarantees, and easy integration into multi-tier services.

This talk will also go over some history of the relation between containers and WebAssembly. I will go over the different ways one can run a WebAssembly module on the cloud (Kubernetes specifically), starting with krustlet and ending by showing the current iteration of the solution involving containerd shims that makes it possible to run a WebAssembly container locally or in the cloud.