OSv - the operating system designed for the cloud

OSv is the open-source versatile modular unikernel designed to run unmodified Linux applications securely on micro-VMs in the cloud. Built from the ground up for effortless deployment and management of micro-services and serverless apps, with superior performance.

Simplified cloud stack

The language runtime, OS and hypervisor all provide protection and abstraction. OSv minimizes the redundancy in these layers by simplifying the OS.

app

Cloud me

Try it out on your existing cloud account.

OSv on the cloud

Run me

Download and run on your local system.

OSv on site

  • Superior Performance

    OSv reduces the memory and cpu overhead imposed by running a traditional OS in a VM. Scheduling is lightweight, the application and the kernel cooperate, and memory pools are shared. OSv provides unparalleled short latencies and constant predictable performance, which translates directly to capex savings by reducing the size and number of OS instances.

  • Rapid VM build and deploy

    OSv gives you low overhead and rapid turnaround, like containers, but with the security you only get from true virtualization. With the Capstan build tool, you can build and run images with one command, creating a complete virtual machine that will run on your existing cloud environment. Creating a VM image adds only 6-7MB of overhead, three seconds of build time, and a few lines of configuration. Learn more about Capstan.

  • Zero OS Management

    Legacy UNIX-style configuration files are gone, replaced with a simple, consistent REST API and consistent deployment, based on cloud-init, that works the same across public and private clouds.

  • DevOps/PaaS like deployment

    OSv instances can be deployed directly from a developer IDE or through your continuous integration system, either within the enterprise or to the cloud. It’s as fast and convenient as a PaaS system, but everything is deployed as a first-class virtual machine directly to your cloud of choice. Learn more about enabling devops.

  • Language Runtimes

    OSv supports many managed language runtimes including unmodified JVM, Python 2 and 3, Node.JS, Ruby, Erlang as well as languages compiling directly to native machine code like Golang and Rust.

  • Optimize your Native apps

    Usually OSv runs unmodified applications. In order to provide better performance than traditional VMs, OSv exposes a low level kernel api.

    An application has access to the block device and flushing, can map the NIC descriptors directly (virtio-app), and can signal the hypervisor. This allows performing IO without taking an expensive kernel path in the guest OS.

OSv was used in MIKELANGELO, a project designed to bridge the gap between HPC and Cloud, by bringing cloud flexibility to HPC and HPC efficiency and power to the cloud. Co-funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. Learn more…

Management

OSv makes all management interfaces, from low-level OS tuning to the application’s management endpoints, available through a discoverable REST API.

rest

An optional in-browser interface makes full-stack development and deployment hassle-free. Learn more….

Key features

  • Superior Performance

    OSv reduces the memory and cpu overhead imposed by running a traditional OS in a VM. Scheduling is lightweight, the application and the kernel cooperate, and memory pools are shared. OSv provides unparalleled short latencies and constant predictable performance, which translates directly to capex savings by reducing the size and number of OS instances.

     

     
  • Rapid VM build and deploy

    OSv gives you low overhead and rapid turnaround, like containers, but with the security you only get from true virtualization. With the Capstan build tool, you can build and run images with one command, creating a complete virtual machine that will run on your existing cloud environment. Creating a VM image adds only 6-7MB of overhead, three seconds of build time, and a few lines of configuration. Learn more about Capstan.

     

     
  • Zero OS Management

    Legacy UNIX-style configuration files are gone, replaced with a simple, consistent REST API and consistent deployment, based on cloud-init, that works the same across public and private clouds.

     

     
  • DevOps/PaaS like deployment

    OSv instances can be deployed directly from a developer IDE or through your continuous integration system, either within the enterprise or to the cloud. It’s as fast and convenient as a PaaS system, but everything is deployed as a first-class virtual machine directly to your cloud of choice. Learn more about enabling devops.

     

     
  • Language Runtimes

    OSv supports many managed language runtimes including unmodified JVM, Python 2 and 3, Node.JS, Ruby, Erlang as well as languages compiling directly to native machine code like Golang and Rust.

     

     
  • Optimize your Native apps

    Usually OSv runs unmodified applications. In order to provide better performance than traditional VMs, OSv exposes a low level kernel api.

    An application has access to the block device and flushing, can map the NIC descriptors directly (virtio-app), and can signal the hypervisor. This allows performing IO without taking an expensive kernel path in the guest OS.