How many Android containers can you fit on your VM? – Guide
There are a variety of options available for running Android application development environments. Even Microsoft has promised that its next Windows 11 will be able to run applications on the desktop and has long supported mobile SO through your Phone app even while smothering your sick Windows Phone with a fluffy Android pillow.
According to Simon Fels, engineering manager at Canonical, the company is unlikely to include a desktop version of Ubuntu with features for Anbox - a cloud product - in the near future. However, with the September announcement that Ubuntu will now happily climb from the heights of the cloud to a single virtual machine via Appliance version, this may change. ..
Anbox Cloud is a software that is running practically identical to the Appliance version of Anbox Cloud. The goal is to make it easier for developers to get started with Android containers without having to spend time setting up infrastructure, deploying things and so on.
AWS Marketplace was touted as a way for Ubuntu Advantage subscribers to get access to a wide variety of software, but Fels says there wasn’t much stopping them from using Anbox Cloud, which is already available. ..
Fels is the founder of Anbox, a project that aims to run Android in containers. He started a GitHub repository a few years ago with the goal of sharing his work with others. “Canonical,” he says, “was heavily investing in Ubuntu Touch as a smartphone operating system, where we were trying to solve the app availability issue to get more apps for it.” ..
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, announced in March that they were discontinuing their Ubuntu Touch operating system. However, as Fels points out, “[t]hey saw customer interest” in the idea of running Android apps in the cloud (“mostly for cloud gaming,” Fels noted) and Anbox Cloud was born. ..
Fels emphasizes that the Anbox internal cloud was a different beast than the open source project. “Anbox Cloud is an independent code base, does not share code with the Anbox open source project on GitHub and is not available under an open source license,” he says.
“Android is a versatile operating system that can be used on a wide variety of devices. It has a lot of features, and is optimized specifically for high density devices.” So if you have the resources, install as many Android instances on your machine as possible. ..
Both companies have the same origins, but the Anbox cloud code is more developed and has a different target use case.
Android is unchanged, though Fels notes that instances don’t pass all compliance tests. “Among those we didn’t pass,” he says, “there are some that just don’t apply to cloud-based instances like CTS was designed with physical devices in mind and others that our containerization precludes.” ..
“There are still a few bugs that need to be fixed,” he said. “Usually, we’re compatible with standard Android.” As long as there are no Google Play dependencies, of course. ..
According to the company, the instances could theoretically consume all of the available resources on the machine. However, to prevent one instance from taking up the entirety of a machine, containers are isolated from each other. ..
“With the vast majority of Android apps running on Arm hardware, ‘physical Arm is absolutely a topic for us,’ says Fels. Of course, Android will work fine on x86 silicon, but Arm tends to be where it is. ‘The problem we’re trying to solve,’ he adds, ‘is not just a software problem, it’s also a hardware problem.’”
This is where Google Play Services comes in. Google Play Services provides a comprehensive set of services that can be used to improve the performance of an Android device. This includes features like security, messaging, and file sharing.”
We are working closely with Ampere Computing, and supporting the Altra chip family by default. We generally run on any Ubuntu-certified Arm platform, including AWS Graviton where the Anbox Cloud Appliance is available on the AWS Marketplace.
Fels believes that the main purpose of the service is to help developers test their ideas. ..
Some people are thinking about ways to use Android in the cloud and move apps away from devices.
Ubuntu is considering a longer release cycle for individual releases, with a new minor version released every three months. ..
Fels says that the containers themselves are not forced to update, but they are also ephemeral and demand that the state be preserved.
Android updates are typically released in the middle of each month, and Anbox Cloud is a Google partner so they receive these patches “up front.”
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Final note
Android containers can be run on virtual machines, but they can also be run on physical servers. This guide will show you how many Android containers you can fit on a virtual machine. ..