Flintlock is an open-source project developed by the Liquid Metal team. It is a lightweight microVM (micro virtual machine) manager designed to run container workloads in secure, isolated environments. Flintlock uses Firecracker, a virtualization technology from AWS, to efficiently create and manage microVMs.
Just a second, what is a microVM?
A microVM (micro virtual machine) is a lightweight, minimal virtual machine designed to run a single workload or process with strong isolation and low overhead.
Key characteristics:
Small footprint: Uses minimal resources (CPU, memory, storage).
Fast startup: Boots in milliseconds.
Strong isolation: Provides security boundaries similar to traditional VMs.
Purpose-built: Often used to run containers or serverless functions securely.
Containers are lighter and faster, but share the host’s kernel, which can be a security risk in multi-tenant environments.
