The footprints of Linux are increasing day by day and the latest addition to this is the Bottlerocket. It is a Linux-based operating system built by Amazon Web Services. This open-source OS targets to host and run the containers on virtual machines or bare metal hosts.
According to the Nucleus Research survey, Amazon is already a dominant platform with over 80% of the cloud-based containers running on AWS. Hence, Bottlerocket is a new and free addition that supports both the Kubernetes and Docker’s images.
Bottlerocket OS As A Container Host
AWS already offers various services for containerized applications such as Elastic Container (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes (EKS). But, Bottlerocket is an operating system that acts as a container host to provide automatic and single-step OS updates.
Here are the list of features Bottlerocket offers:
- Single-step update to all container applications
- Auto-update using other AWS container service
- High security and resource management
- Free and open-source with three years of support
- API access for configuration
If you aren’t aware, a container is similar to normal applications that actually combine all the codes and its dependencies. This helps to run a containerized applications in any environment and platform.
Bottlerocket behaves like an independent container host, in which you don’t require to update your applications package-by-package. Instead, you can use Amazon EKS service to enable easy rollbacks in case of failure.
For providing better security, Bottlerocket prevents the system access via SSH and performs file integrity checks during boot time.
How To Use Bottlerocket?
Well, this is the first public release that mainly focuses on Kubernetes. Therefore, you are required to set up an elastic Kubernetes cluster to try Bottlerocket.
For building the cluster, first, you need to get Bottlerocket Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). But, also remember, for using the EC2 instances and EKS, you have to buy it at a standard price.
Now, set the Bottlrocket AMI with EC2 instance and configure it into EKS clusters. In the end, you’re ready to interact with your containers using the Kubernetes control panel.
For more technical details, you can follow the steps given here.
