Why and How to Use containerd From Command Line

containerd is a high-level container runtime, aka container manager. To put it simply, it's a daemon that manages the complete container lifecycle on a single host: creates, starts, stops containers, pulls and stores images, configures mounts, networking, etc.

containerd is designed to be easily embeddable into larger systems. Docker uses containerd under the hood to run containers. Kubernetes can use containerd via CRI to manage containers on a single node. But smaller projects also can benefit from the ease of integrating with containerd - for instance, faasd uses containerd (we need more d's!) to spin up a full-fledged Function-as-a-Service solution on a standalone server.

Docker and Kubernetes use containerd

However, using containerd programmatically is not the only option. It also can be used from the command line via one of the available clients. The resulting container UX may not be as comprehensive and user-friendly as the one provided by the docker client, but it still can be useful, for instance, for debugging or learning purposes.

containerd command-line clients (ctr, nerdctl, crictl)

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conman - [the] Container Manager: Inception

With this article, I want to start a series about the implementation of a container manager. What the heck is a container manager? Some prominent examples would be containerd, cri-o, dockerd, and podman. People here and there keep calling them container runtimes, but I would like to reserve the term runtime for a lower-level thingy - the OCI runtime (de facto runc), and a higher-level component controlling multiple such runtime instances I'd like to call a container manager. In general, by a container manager, I mean a piece of software doing a complete container lifecycle management on a single host. In the following series, I will try to guide you myself through the challenge of the creation of yet another container manager. By no means, the implementation is going to be feature-complete, correct or safe to use. The goal is rather to prove the already proven concept. So, mostly for the sake of fun, let the show begin!

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Journey From Containerization To Orchestration And Beyond

Containers gave birth to more advanced server-side architectures and sophisticated deployment techniques. Containers nowadays are so widespread that there is already a bunch of standard-alike specifications (1, 2, 3, 4, ...) describing different aspects of the containers universe. Of course, on the lowest level lie Linux primitives such as namespaces and cgroups. But containerization software is already so massive that it would be barely possible to implement it without its own concern separation layers. What I'm trying to achieve in this ongoing effort is to guide myself starting from the lowest layers to the topmost ones, having as much practice (code, installation, configuration, integration, etc) and, of course, fun as possible. The content of this page is going to be changing over time, reflecting my understanding of the topic.

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