Amazon Web Services Lanches Bottlerocket

AWS decided to throw their hat into the lightweight container-centric Linux distribution ring. This new offering, Bottlerocket, is optimized for users who depend on AWS for back-end IT automation. Through AWS, admins can quickly spin up an instance of this purpose-built operating system to make running containers easier and more reliable. 

With Bottlerocket on AWS, users will experience higher uptimes with a lower operational cost and lower management complexity. This is made so because Bottlerocket has a lower footprint, faster boot times, and smaller attack surface (compared to general-purpose operating systems). 

Bottlerocket receives heightened security thanks to automatic OS updates. Updates are applied as a single unit, which can be quickly rolled back if necessary. This update system is made possible because Bottlerocket doesn't employ a package manager, so software can only be run as containers. Updates are applied in a single atomic step (which also reduces update errors).

The primary components of Bottlerocket are:

• Minimal OS which includes the Linux kernel (version 5.4), system software, and the containerd runtime.
• Atomic update mechanism.
• Integrations for container orchestrators such as Amazon EKS.
• Admin container that can be optionally run for troubleshooting and debugging.

Find out more about Bottlerocket on the official AWS page.