Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

runc VS etcd

Compare runc VS etcd and see what are their differences

runc logo runc

CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification - opencontainers/runc

etcd logo etcd

A distributed, reliable key-value store for the most critical data of a distributed system
  • runc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-21
  • etcd Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-29

runc features and specs

  • Standardization
    runc is part of the Open Containers Initiative (OCI), promoting standardization across container runtimes. This ensures interoperability and broad community support.
  • Lightweight
    As a lightweight and fast CLI tool, runc provides a minimal runtime for environments where resource efficiency is critical.
  • Security
    runc adheres to principles of secure software development and incorporates Linux kernel features like namespaces and cgroups to enhance security.
  • Broad Adoption
    As the reference implementation for OCI, runc is widely adopted and tested in production environments, ensuring reliability.
  • Flexibility
    runc offers the flexibility to handle low-level container configurations, making it suitable for advanced users needing granular control.

Possible disadvantages of runc

  • Complexity for Beginners
    The low-level nature of runc can be daunting for beginners who might prefer higher-level tools like Docker that abstract away complexities.
  • Minimalist Design
    While its simplicity is an advantage, runc lacks some of the advanced features and orchestration capabilities found in other container platforms.
  • Manual Configurations
    Users need to manually handle configurations, which can be error-prone and time-consuming compared to automated solutions.
  • Ecosystem Integration
    runc does not provide direct integration with tools and platforms by default, requiring additional setup for comprehensive ecosystem support.
  • Limited Features
    Compared to complete container platforms, runc offers fewer built-in features, requiring supplementary tools to achieve similar functionalities.

etcd features and specs

  • Consistency
    etcd uses the Raft consensus algorithm to ensure strong consistency across distributed systems, making it ideal for scenarios where reliable data storage is critical.
  • High Availability
    By distributing data across multiple nodes, etcd ensures high availability and fault tolerance, allowing services to remain operational even if some nodes fail.
  • Simplicity
    etcd offers a simple key-value store interface, making it easy to understand and integrate with other services without requiring complex configurations.
  • Performance
    Optimized for fast reads and writes, etcd can handle large volumes of concurrent requests, making it suitable for high-performance applications.
  • Secure
    etcd provides excellent security features, including SSL/TLS encryption for data in transit and role-based access control to ensure that data access is tightly controlled.

Possible disadvantages of etcd

  • Resource Intensive
    Running etcd, especially in a clustered configuration, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant CPU and memory to ensure optimal performance and reliability.
  • Operational Complexity
    Although etcd itself is simple, managing a distributed etcd cluster can become complex, requiring expertise to configure and maintain properly.
  • Data Volume Limitations
    etcd is not designed as a general-purpose database and has limitations on how much data it can efficiently store, typically up to a few gigabytes per cluster.
  • Write Throughput
    The write throughput of etcd can be a bottleneck under heavy load, as it needs to ensure data consistency across nodes, which can introduce latency.
  • Limited Query Capabilities
    As a key-value store, etcd lacks the advanced querying capabilities of traditional databases, which may limit its use for complex data retrieval operations.

runc videos

2/21/19 RunC Vulnerability Gives Root Access on Container Systems| AT&T ThreatTraq

More videos:

  • Review - Demo MONEY,TIME - RunC

etcd videos

ETCD in Kubernetes

More videos:

  • Review - Service Discovery Zookeeper vs etcd vs consul أكتشاف الخدمات شرح عربى
  • Review - Episode#11 Working with ETCD - Backup and Restore Operations - Part#1

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to runc and etcd)
Web Servers
48 48%
52% 52
Web And Application Servers
Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy
Developer Tools
54 54%
46% 46

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, etcd should be more popular than runc. It has been mentiond 32 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

runc mentions (11)

  • Setup multi node kubernetes cluster using kubeadm
    For kubeadm , kubetlet , kubectl should same version package in this lab I used v1.31 to have 1.31.7 References: Https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/networking/ports-and-protocols/ Https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/install-kubeadm/ Https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/releases/... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Comparing 3 Docker container runtimes - Runc, gVisor and Kata Containers
    Previously I wrote about the multiple variants of Docker and also the dependencies behind the Docker daemon. One of the dependencies was the container runtime called runc. That is what creates the usual containers we are all familiar with. When you use Docker, this is the default runtime, which is understandable since it was started by Docker, Inc. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • You run containers, not dockers - Discussing Docker variants, components and versioning
    Now we have dockerd which uses containerd, but containerd will not create containers directly. It needs a runtime and the default runtime is runc, but that can be changed. Containerd actually doesn't have to know the parameters of the runtime. There is a shim process between containerd and runc, so containerd knows the parameters of the shim, and the shim knows the parameters of runc or other runtimes. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • US Cybersecurity: The Urgent Need for Memory Safety in Software Products
    It's interesting that, in light of things like this, you still see large software companies adding support for new components written in non-memory safe languages (e.g. C) As an example Red Hat OpenShift added support for crun(https://github.com/containers/crun), which is written in C as an alternative to runc, which is written in Go( - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Why did the Krustlet project die?
    Yeah, runtimeClass lets you specify which CRI plugin you want based on what you have available. Here's an example from the containerd documentation - you could have one node that can run containers under standard runc, gvisor, kata containers, or WASM. Without runtimeClass, you'd need either some form of custom solution or four differently configured nodes to run those different runtimes. That's how krustlet did... Source: over 2 years ago
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etcd mentions (32)

  • Unlock your Kubernetes to run custom resource based microservices in any scale
    Unfortunately there is a big problem with custom controllers, they can't handle huge amount of data for several reasons. Kubernetes relies on ETCD for all data storage, which limits scalability, flexibility, and performance for complex or high-volume workloads. What kind of problems I'm talking about? - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • AWS Config vs Kubernetes Native Policy Engines: Who Governs What?
    In Amazon EKS, AWS Config helps you track key components such as: EKS control plane logging, VPC settings and network exposure, encryption status for logs and secrets and IAM roles used by worker node groups. It can detect misconfigurations like: 🚫 Publicly accessible EKS clusters ⚠️ Disabled encryption for secrets stored in Kubernetes ETCD ⚠️ Ensures EKS clusters are running on currently supported versions,. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • The Double-Edged Sword of Microservices: Balancing Abstraction and Complexity
    Using a service discovery mechanism: A service discovery mechanism, such as etcd or ZooKeeper, can help to manage the complexity of microservices by providing a centralized registry of available services and their instances. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Designing a fault-tolerant etcd cluster
    Etcd is an open-source leader-based distributed key-value datastore designed by a vibrant team of engineers at CoreOS in 2013 and donated to Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in 2018. Since then, etcd has grown to be adopted as a datastore in major projects like Kubernetes, CoreDNS, OpenStack, and other relevant tools. Etcd is built to be simple, secure, reliable, and fast (benchmarked 10,000 writes/sec),... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Kubernetes Cluster Architecture
    Etcd is a key value store for all cluster data. It is an etcd data store. So, It is highly available, reliable, and distributed. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing runc and etcd, you can also consider the following products

Docker Hub - Docker Hub is a cloud-based registry service

Apache ZooKeeper - Apache ZooKeeper is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source server which enables highly reliable distributed coordination.

Apache Thrift - An interface definition language and communication protocol for creating cross-language services.

Eureka - Eureka is a contact center and enterprise performance through speech analytics that immediately reveals insights from automated analysis of communications including calls, chat, email, texts, social media, surveys and more.

Avro - Avro Keyboard is an Unicode and ANSI compliant Free Bangla Typing Software and Bangla Spell Checker for Windows.

SkyDNS - DNS service discovery for etcd. Contribute to skynetservices/skydns development by creating an account on GitHub.