How to run kata containers from docker

This document describes the basics of running a kata container, using the docker command line tool.

This might be helpful for those getting started with kata containers or just wanting to employ kata's confinement to existing workflows with docker.

Requirements

• A working docker installation.

Note: Newer versions of docker (v26+) require Kata Containers 3.29.0 (for the go runtime) and 3.30.0 (for the rust runtime), and the support is only tested with QEMU as the VMM.

Install and configure Kata Containers

Download the appropriate architecture's package from the Releases on Github https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/releases Extract the files to a temporary location and install into /opt:

$ tar -xvf kata-static-${VERSION}-${ARCH}.tar.zst
$ sudo mv opt/kata/ /opt/

Configure the docker daemon for the kata runtime (assuming no such file exists):

$ sudo cat <<EOF > /etc/docker/daemon.json
{
  "runtimes": {
    "kata": {
      "runtimeType": "/opt/kata/bin/containerd-shim-kata-v2"
    }
  }
}
$ sudo systemctl reload docker

Optionally at this point, to use a custom configuration for kata itself, create it in /etc/kata-containers/configuration.toml.

To launched a kata container and observe the guest kernel version:

$ docker run --runtime kata -it --rm ubuntu:24.04 uname -r