GPU, USB, NICs and Other Physical Devices in Your Containers - Stéphane Graber, Canonical Ltd.

GPU, USB, NICs and Other Physical Devices in Your Containers - Stéphane Graber, Canonical Ltd.

The very definition of a container is that it's a set of processes, or in this case full operating system which is sharing the kernel with the host machine.

This opens a full array of possibilities as far as what can be shared between host and container. This talk will be covering some of the most common use cases, such as sharing one or multiple GPUs with a container for compute use, accessing USB devices or physical network interfaces. Then go into slightly weirder cases of kernel device passthrough and see what can be done in such containers.

Outside of the obvious GPU compute use case, device passthrough can also be used to consolidate a number of distinct, mostly idle or old machines into just a single one, including any custom hardware that they may have attached to them and with very little hassle.

Working on Android apps and need to build a CI platform driving a large number of phones, USB passthrough can make this very easy for you too.

LXD will be used as the container manager as it makes all of this rather easy as part of its goal to offer a VM-like environment but built on top of Linux containers.

About Stéphane Graber
Stéphane Graber works as the technical lead for LXD at Canonical Ltd. He is the upstream project leader for LXC and LXD and a frequent speaker and track leader at various containers and other Linux related events.

Stéphane is also a long time contributor to the Ubuntu Linux distribution as an Ubuntu Core Developer and he currently sits on the Ubuntu Technical Board.

On his spare time, Stéphane helps organize a yearly security conference and contest in Montréal, Northsec, where his knowledge of Linux and network infrastructure is used to simulate the most complex of environments for the contestants.