Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Bottlerocket which includes only the essential software to run containers. It also comes with a single-step update mechanism. With these properties, customers can use container orchestrators to manage OS updates with minimal disruptions, enabling better uptime for containerized applications and lower operational costs. The first release of Bottlerocket, a Linux-based open-source operating system focuses on Kubernetes.
It will be released to the public at the end of 2020
While Amazon EKS supports Bottlerocket and it is now available in public preview at no cost as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Jeff Barr, the chief evangelist for AWS, stated in a blog post on Bottlerocket:
“Bottlerocket reflects much of what we have learned over the years. It includes only the packages that are needed to make it a great container host and integrates with existing container orchestrators. It supports Docker image and images that conform to the Open Container Initiative (OCI) image format.”
It has many benefits including increased uptime for container applications, an open-source development model that enables custom builds, improved security and resource utilization, optimized performance through AWS integrations and more. It also comes with three years of support.
Amazon plans to release the Bottlerocket to the general public at the end of 2020. Customers can get started using Bottlerocket by launching Amazon EC2 instances with the Bottlerocket AMI. They can find the instructions on Github.