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DevOps & Automation · Intermediate

Container Runtime

The software that runs containers on a host, such as containerd, CRI-O, or the low-level runc.

Definition

High-level runtimes manage images and container lifecycle and expose the Container Runtime Interface to Kubernetes; low-level OCI runtimes like runc create namespaces and cgroups. Sandboxed runtimes like gVisor and Kata Containers add isolation.

Example

A kubelet is configured with --container-runtime-endpoint=unix:///run/containerd/containerd.sock.

Exam tip

Kubernetes talks to runtimes via CRI; Docker Engine is no longer used directly by kubelet.

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