How to optimize the security, size and build speed of Docker images
augmentedmind.de
augmentedmind.de
* I've been playing with checkov recently as a way to track Dockerfile quality and best practices
* If you use GitHub, here are some additional considerations
* Use image digests for base images and configure Dependabot to update
* Look into implementing OpenSSF Scorecard and Allstar
* Supply chain security is hot right now. Look into cosign (signing) and syft (SBOM)
* Step Security has a GitHub action to harden the runner. Think of it as Little Snitch for runners
Docker hasn't been signing official images for the last several years, so turning this on means you'll get the last correctly signed images, which happen to be years out of date.
https://github.com/containerd/stargz-snapshotter
It's a lazy file system for images.
In any event, thanks for pointing that out; I'll have to play with it:)
I mean there is almost no need to worry about making images smaller if you are using stargz, because it just won't pull anything that's not needed.
Doesn't this, in practice, make the Docker image size situation worse? Docker caches images in layers and reuses e.g. base layers for all operations. Creating a custom single-layer image for each of your binaries negates all the benefits of the layered caching. You have to download the full image on each pull, rather than just the diffs.
Conversely, when I pull the Docker image for an updated version of my software, I typically only have to pull the last few small layers because the base image hasn't changed.
That probably depends on your circumstances! For example, you could use a particular OS image as your base, software with updates as a set of intermediate layers and your software and whatever else you need as the last ones. That way, leaving the layers as they are would indeed result in some pretty good efficiency, since only the changed layers would need to be pulled.
Whereas if you base your software on a particular runtime image, e.g. OpenJDK or one of its varieties, then it's unlikely that you'll see such nice benefits, at least if you'll regularly update the version of the base image that you're using. Now, whether you should update everything that often in lieu of any serious security vulnerabilities, however, is another question.
So, in the end, using docker-slim does make image downloads (and container start-up time) _less_ efficient in those specific cases where you are releasing new images very often (e.g. daily, or even multiple times per day), assuming that the base image is released less often (e.g. weekly of monthly, as is e.g. the case for Python).