Karlsruhe Cloud Native Meetup: April 2026 Edition

Welcome to Cloud Native Karlsruhe Spring Edition! As the seasons change, so does the CNCF landscape: We are now an official Cloud Native Community Group ⛵️ Join us in celebration 🎉

🚤 UNIKERNELS

Simon will talk about the Unikraft unikernel project, which lets you build tiny, highly specialized microVMs by including only the operating system components an application actually needs. Starting from container images, applications can be transformed into microVMs, preserving the container‑based workflow while gaining many—if not all—of the measurable benefits: millisecond‑scale boot times, high performance, and a dramatically reduced trusted computing base (TCB), all with low resource usage.

While the approach is broadly applicable, this talk focuses on network functions and sandboxes, motivated by a common trade‑off: containers are excellent for packaging and rapid iteration, but they lack the strong isolation guarantees provided by virtual machines. The first case study emphasizes performance, while the second emphasizes security through stronger isolation and a reduced attack surface.

If time permits, a short CLI demo will show how to build and run a tailored unikernel.

🌶️ HOT ONES: OBSERVABILITY

The show with hot questions about observability, and even hotter wings. Watch Michele and Alex live having a wide-ranging conversation about Observability, as they eat hotter and hotter sauces from the Hot Ones format and their mouth gets on fire.

And if you dare, you can try the sauces too.

AGENDA

18:30: Arriving and networking

18:45: Unikernels

19:15: Break, discussion, and pizza

19:45: Hot Ones - Observability

20:45: Time for discussion and networking