DeveloperWeek 2023

Michael Yuan, Founder, Second State

The Linux container is a critical innovation that drives cloud-native applications. Developers are now deploying containerized applications outside of cloud centers on edge networks (e.g., serverless functions on CDNs), on edge devices (e.g., smart cars), and on SaaS (including databases) as embedded functions. In those use cases, the Linux container, with guest OS and support software, is too heavy, too slow, and not portable enough. WebAssembly (WASM) has emerged as a lightweight runtime for those applications. The WasmEdge Runtime and crun projects work together to make WASM a first-class citizen in the container ecosystem, running side by side with Linux containers in a single cluster, managed by existing container tools. In this talk, Michael will discuss how WASM fits into the container ecosystem, how to use container tools (e.g., CRI-O and containerd) to start WASM images, and how edge-optimized Kubernetes (e.g., KubeEdge / SuperEdge / OpenYurt) manage WASM applications. And also use WebAssembly runtime to run secure wasm apps side by side in Docker with Linux containers.

This talk gives practical advice on when and how to use cloud-native Wasm in your own applications

The speaker will showcase developer tools and partnerships that enable fully-fledged microservices in WebAssembly, as a lightweight and secure alternative to container-based applications.