About Serverlet

Introduction

You’re probably wondering what a serverlet actually is. We won’t keep you waiting — it’s the name of our web hosting. Why serverlet? We think the generic term “web hosting” doesn’t quite fit our case and doesn’t capture all the possibilities it offers. Our serverlet is somewhat of a compromise between ordinary web hosting and a virtualized managed server — a bit of a hybrid, so to speak.

Technology

A serverlet itself is an environment we’ve assembled for running your application, virtualized at the OS level using LXC — in our case, a Docker container. However, this isn’t virtualization in the strict sense. Your serverlet contains all the software needed to run your application and is completely isolated from the serverlets/applications of other users.

Operating system

Every serverlet has its own small, largely independent OS. We use Ubuntu as both the host operating system and the OS inside the serverlet — currently Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Process manager

Unlike a typical Ubuntu system, service management in our serverlet is handled by runit. It makes sure all your applications start correctly after boot and are restarted automatically if they crash. You can read more about it in the dedicated Runit chapter.