LXC vs LXD

Overview

LXC

Stacks116

Followers223

Votes19

GitHub Stars5.0K

Forks1.2K

LXD

Stacks104

Followers194

Votes68

LXC vs LXD: What are the differences?

Containerization technology: LXC is a Linux containerization technology that provides lightweight virtualization and enables running multiple isolated Linux systems on a single Linux host. On the other hand, LXD is a system container manager that is designed to manage LXC containers and provides a more comprehensive and user-friendly interface for working with containers.
REST API and CLI: LXC primarily uses a command-line interface (CLI) for managing containers, while LXD offers both a CLI and a REST API to interact with containers. The REST API allows for programmatic control of containers, enabling automation and integration with other systems.
Image management: LXC relies on manually created container images, and users have to maintain them. In contrast, LXD provides a centralized image registry where pre-configured container images are available for download. This makes it easier to manage and share container images across different hosts.
Live migration: LXD supports live migration, which allows containers to be moved between different hosts without interruptions in service. This feature is not available in LXC, making it more difficult to balance container workloads across multiple hosts.
Resource control: LXD offers more extensive resource control capabilities compared to LXC. It allows for fine-grained control over CPU, memory, network, and storage resources of containers, enabling better optimization and isolation. LXC provides more basic resource control options.
Snapshots and container state: LXD allows for the creation of snapshots, which are point-in-time copies of the container's filesystem and configuration. This enables easy rollback to previous states or the creation of new containers from snapshots. LXC does not natively provide snapshot functionality.

In summary, LXD builds upon LXC and provides additional features such as a comprehensive REST API, image management, live migration, enhanced resource control, and snapshot capabilities, making it a more advanced and user-friendly system container manager.

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Advice on LXC, LXD

Florian

IT DevOp at Agitos GmbH

Oct 22, 2019

Decided

lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.

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Detailed Comparison

LXC	LXD
LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.	LXD isn't a rewrite of LXC, in fact it's building on top of LXC to provide a new, better user experience. Under the hood, LXD uses LXC through liblxc and its Go binding to create and manage the containers. It's basically an alternative to LXC's tools and distribution template system with the added features that come from being controllable over the network.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 5.0K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 116	Stacks 104
Followers 223	Followers 194
Votes 19	Votes 68
Pros & Cons
Pros 5 Easy to use 4 Lightweight 3 Good security 3 Simple and powerful 2 LGPL	Pros 10 More simple 8 Open Source 8 Best 8 API 7 Cluster

What are some alternatives to LXC, LXD?

Docker

The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere

rkt

Rocket is a cli for running App Containers. The goal of rocket is to be composable, secure, and fast.

Vagrant Cloud

Vagrant Cloud pairs with Vagrant to enable access, insight and collaboration across teams, as well as to bring exposure to community contributions and development environments.

Studio 3T

It's the only MongoDB tool that provides three ways to explore data alongside powerful features like query autocompletion, polyglot code generation, a stage-by-stage aggregation query builder, import and export, SQL query support and more.

OpenVZ

Virtuozzo leverages OpenVZ as its core of a virtualization solution offered by Virtuozzo company. Virtuozzo is optimized for hosters and offers hypervisor (VMs in addition to containers), distributed cloud storage, dedicated support, management tools, and easy installation.

SmartOS

It combines the capabilities you get from a lightweight container OS, optimized to deliver containers, with the robust security, networking and storage capabilities you’ve come to expect and depend on from a hardware hypervisor.

Clear Containers

We set out to build Clear Containers by leveraging the isolation of virtual-machine technology along with the deployment benefits of containers. As part of this, we let go of the "generic PC hardware" notion traditionally associated with virtual machines; we're not going to pretend to be a standard PC that is compatible with just about any OS on the planet.

Flatpak

It is a next-generation technology for building and distributing desktop applications on Linux

Lima

It launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing, port forwarding, and containerd. It can be considered as some sort of unofficial "macOS subsystem for Linux", or "containerd for Mac". It is expected to be used on macOS hosts, but can be used on Linux hosts as well. It may work on NetBSD and Windows hosts as well.

Boxfuse

It generates minimal images for your application in seconds. They boot directly on virtual hardware. There is no classic OS and no container runtime.

Related Comparisons

LXC vs LXD: What are the differences?

Containerization technology: LXC is a Linux containerization technology that provides lightweight virtualization and enables running multiple isolated Linux systems on a single Linux host. On the other hand, LXD is a system container manager that is designed to manage LXC containers and provides a more comprehensive and user-friendly interface for working with containers.
REST API and CLI: LXC primarily uses a command-line interface (CLI) for managing containers, while LXD offers both a CLI and a REST API to interact with containers. The REST API allows for programmatic control of containers, enabling automation and integration with other systems.
Image management: LXC relies on manually created container images, and users have to maintain them. In contrast, LXD provides a centralized image registry where pre-configured container images are available for download. This makes it easier to manage and share container images across different hosts.
Live migration: LXD supports live migration, which allows containers to be moved between different hosts without interruptions in service. This feature is not available in LXC, making it more difficult to balance container workloads across multiple hosts.
Resource control: LXD offers more extensive resource control capabilities compared to LXC. It allows for fine-grained control over CPU, memory, network, and storage resources of containers, enabling better optimization and isolation. LXC provides more basic resource control options.
Snapshots and container state: LXD allows for the creation of snapshots, which are point-in-time copies of the container's filesystem and configuration. This enables easy rollback to previous states or the creation of new containers from snapshots. LXC does not natively provide snapshot functionality.

LXC vs LXD

Overview