Architecture - BoxLite Documentation

BoxLite starts a real lightweight VM per box. Understanding the layers helps when you are choosing security settings, diagnosing a slow start, or explaining the isolation story to a security reviewer. The chain, end to end:

Your code → SDK → Rust core → Shim → Jailer → MicroVM → Guest Agent

In this section

Core components

What each module owns, where its state lives, and which metrics it emits. Start here.

Security and isolation

How isolation is layered against a guest assumed hostile from boot.

Networking

The user-mode stack, the fixed subnet, and DNS handling.

Storage

The digest-keyed image cache and the copy-on-write rootfs.

Boot latency

Where the time goes, and why the second start is faster.

Which page do I want?

You are asking	Page
What are the moving parts?	core components
How strong is the isolation, really?	security and isolation
Why is my first box slow?	boot latency
How does a box reach the internet?	networking
Where do the bytes live on my disk?	storage

​In this section