Mirage is a programming framework for constructing secure, high-performance network applications across a variety of cloud computing and mobile platforms. Code can be developed on a normal OS such as Linux or MacOS X, and then compiled into a fully-standalone, specialised unikernel that runs under the Xen hypervisor. Since Xen powers most public cloud computing infrastructure such as Amazon EC2, this lets your servers run more cheaply, securely and finer control than with a full software stack.
The most up-to-date documentation can be found at the homepage. The site is self-hosted and a useful example. Simpler skeleton applications are also available online.
This repository includes:
- a command-line tool to create and deploy applications with Mirage; and
- in
types/, a library of type signatures that compliant applications use.
There are several diverse backends in Mirage that require rather specialised build steps (from JavaScript to Xen unikernels), and this complexity is wrapped up in the tool.
To work with Mirage, you'll need the following prerequisites installed:
- a working OCaml compiler (4.01.0 or higher).
- the OPAM source package manager (1.2.0 or higher).
- an x86_64 or armel Linux host to compile Xen kernels, or FreeBSD, OpenBSD or MacOS X for the userlevel version.
There are two stages to using mirage:
- a configure phase where OPAM package dependencies are satisfied.
- a build phase where the compiler and any support scripts are run.
mirage currently uses a configuration file to build a Mirage unikernel. While
we're documenting it all, please see the lib_test directory in this repository
for the regression examples. The latest instructions are also to be found at
http://openmirage.org/docs
Provided that one and only one file of name <foo>.conf (where <foo> can be
any string) is present in the current working directory, the command:
mirage configure
will configure your project. It will generate a Makefile and main.ml with
the appropriate boilerplate for your chosen platform.
To configure for the Unix-direct target (using tap interfaces), do:
mirage configure --unix
To build for the Xen target, do:
mirage configure --xen
To compile your application, use:
make
Every mirage backend will have a different way to be deployed. On Unix, the unikernel will run as a Unix process, using a virtual interface (tap) if needed:
./mir-<project-name>
On Xen, the unikernel will run as a virtual machine. For instance, using the
xl command-line tool:
xl create <project-name>.xl
Configuration files for xe and libvirt are also generated by the tool (see
the files <project-name>_libvirt.xml and <project-name>.xe in the build
directory).
In order to deploy a Mirage unikernel to Amazon EC2, you need to install the AWS
tools on your machine, build a unikernel with the --xen option and then use
the ec2.sh script (in directory script) in order to register your kernel
with AWS. Then you can start your kernel with the web interface to AWS or any
other means AWS provides to start EC2 instances.