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Amazon Web Services announced the launch of new open-source operating system for running containers on bare metal servers and virtual machines.
AWS Bottlerocket is currently available for preview and is a stripped-down Linux distribution that includes only the components that are necessary for up and running containers. It supports both Docker images and the other in accordance with the Open Container Initiative or OCI Image Format. Its similar to projects like CoreOS’s now-defunct container Linux and Google’s container-optimized OS.
But software containers require a host operating system, and the majority runs on public-purpose OS systems that were never designed for that purpose. One feature which makes Bottlerocket stand out is that it does away with a package-based update system. Instead, it uses an image-based model, which makes it a tricky task to automate. AWS evangelist Jeff Barr told in his blog post announcing Bootlerocket.
How it Works
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source – https://aws.amazon.com/bottlerocket/
Here are some of its benefits –
To lower the error rates and improve the uptime for container applications, Updates are applied in a single step and can be rolled back. By contrast, general-purpose operating systems are typically updated package-by-package.
By using container orchestration services such as Amazon EKS, updates to Bottlerocket can be automated, which reduces operational cost and lowers management overhead.
To improves resource utilization, essential software is included in Bottlerockets, which reduces the attack surface compared to general-purpose operating systems.
Bottlerocket is optimized to run on Amazon EC2, which includes support for the latest EC2 instance capabilities. They also come with built-in integration with AWS service for container orchestration, registries, and observability.
AWS will provide three years of support after general availability, and AWS support plans will cover these at no additional cost. In addition to that, community support is available on Github.