Why sandboxes use microVMs
A container shares the kernel of the machine it runs on. A microVM does not. Code that breaks out of its own environment still meets a separate kernel before it reaches the host. That makes microVMs a common choice for running code written by an AI model or by a stranger.
How a microVM differs from a full VM
A microVM leaves out most of the devices a normal virtual machine emulates. It has a kernel, a disk and a network card, and little else. That is why it starts fast and why one server can hold thousands of them.
MicroVM technologies
Firecracker
A virtual machine monitor from AWS. Used by Lizard Sandboxes, Mosaic Sandbox, Oblien Workspace, CreateOS Sandbox, DigitalOcean Harness Runtime, Together Sandbox, Declaw, E2B, HopX, InstaVM, Leap0, Superserve, Thunder Sandboxes, PandaStack Sandbox, LangSmith Sandboxes, Caged, Cloudflare Sandbox, AWS Lambda MicroVMs, Deno Sandbox, Vercel Sandbox, Maritime, OmniRun, RemoteHost and Unikraft Cloud.Cloud Hypervisor
An open-source monitor from the Linux Foundation.Kata Containers
Runs containers inside lightweight virtual machines.
