MicroVM vs gVisor

MicroVMs and gVisor are two technologies designed to enhance container security by addressing the shared host kernel attack surface, each offering distinct isolation models and performance characteristics. MicroVMs, such as those implemented by AWS's Firecracker, provide hardware-level isolation with a dedicated guest kernel for each workload, making them ideal for actively adversarial workloads and I/O-heavy tasks, although they require KVM support and entail more complex infrastructure. Conversely, gVisor, developed by Google, offers syscall-level isolation by intercepting system calls in user space without requiring a dedicated kernel or hardware virtualisation, making it suitable for environments lacking KVM support and workloads that need quick startup times. Northflank, a full-stack cloud platform, leverages both technologies in production to apply the appropriate isolation based on workload requirements, demonstrating that MicroVMs and gVisor can be complementary rather than competing solutions.