What is a unikernel? A unikernel is simply an application that has been boiled down to a small, secure, light-weight virtual machine. The resulting virtual machine image does not contain an operating system like Linux or Windows. There are no users and no shell to login. Since it is one application it prevents other applications from running by design. Unikernels are widely considered to be the next generation of cloud infrastructure for their speed and security.
Why Use unikernels? Unikernels are fast, secure, increase server density and eliminate devops. Unikernels can boot 2 orders of magnitude faster than docker and run software up to 200% faster on GCP and up to 300% faster on AWS. Unikernels by design help prevent many types of remote code execution attacks and you can run thousands of them on commodity hardware.
Last modified 01 March 2026