[EKS]: Add support for running WASM containers on EKS using WASI

[bryantbiggs]

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Tell us about your request

• Add support for running WASM containers on EKS using the webassembly interface (WASI)

Which service(s) is this request for?

• EKS

Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?

• WASM containers are smaller, faster (launching), and more secure than traditional Linux containers. Because of their smaller and more compact form, they can enable interesting use cases such as running workloads at the edge or in resource constrained environments as well as for workloads that need to scale very quickly in a short amount of time. Some example workloads that would benefit include:
  • Real time bidding platforms (ads, trading platforms, etc.) that are latency sensitive - typically running close to their workloads on something like Outposts and/or Local Zones
  • ?

Are you currently working around this issue?

• Currently investigating https://www.fermyon.com/spin

Additional context

• containerd now supports running WASM containers via WASI https://github.com/containerd/runwasi using shims
• I am curious to hear from others in the community in terms of what they are looking to do with WASM (what type of workloads, motivations, deployment models today, etc.)

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[stevehipwell]

I think this issue is related to https://github.com/aws/containers-roadmap/issues/1772 as both could be implemented as alternative runtimes through containerd.

[bryantbiggs]

hmm, I'm not sure - Firecracker requires the use of bare metal instances whereas here I am more interested in just being able to run WASM containers natively. I *think I might be able to do this today, but need to spend some time investigating

[stevehipwell]

WASM (and Firecracker) support should be possible today by building a custom node image supporting the alternate runtime and registering a custom RuntimeClass wit EKS.

It's worth noting that AKS already has public preview support for WASM & Kata containers.

[piotr-yuxuan]

Some blogpost related to this feature: https://changelog.com/posts/webassembly-runtimes-will-replace-container-runtimes-by-2030 (it is only an opinion, not an established fact 🙂)