RustyHermit Delivers A Rust-Based, Modular Unikernel For MicroVMs

Showcased today at the annual FOSDEM conference in Brussels was RustyHermit, a Rust-written modular unikernel intended for handling micro virtual machines.

RustyHermit is being developed as a Rust-based successor to HermitCore, a former unikernel effort from the same software developers but what had been written in C and now deemed deprecated in favor of the Rust-based solution.

RustyHermit is designed to support QEMU's microVM virtual platform as well as Firecracker for handling lightweight virtual machines. The project has also been developing Uhyve as a Rust-written minimal hypervisor for RustyHermit images.

RustyHermit is receiving funding via the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Stefan Lankes, Martin Kröning, and Jonathan Klimt were presenting at FOSDEM over this unikernel project.

The use of Rust was reportedly chosen for RustyHermit due to being productive, fun, and safe. Some of the features that are still a work-in-progress for this unikernel are ARM support, overhauling the TCP/IP stack, increased modularization, and other features.

Those wishing to learn more about RustyHermit can see the PDF slide deck from FOSDEM 2023. Those wanting to check out the code can find this dual Apache and MIT licensed unikernel on GitHub.