Balena Engine is a container engine specifically designed for embedded and IoT use cases, leveraging Moby Project technology from Docker. It provides a robust and efficient solution for deploying and managing applications on a wide range of devices, from tiny IoT sensors to large industrial gateways. Unlike general-purpose container engines, Balena Engine is optimized for the unique constraints of the embedded world, offering a significantly smaller footprint (3.5x smaller than Docker CE) and conservative resource utilization. It supports a wide variety of chipset architectures, ensuring compatibility across diverse hardware. A key innovation is its true container deltas, enabling bandwidth-efficient updates that are 10-70x smaller than traditional layer pulls, crucial for devices with limited connectivity. The engine also prioritizes storage longevity and operational resilience by minimizing disk wear-and-tear through on-arrival layer extraction and ensuring failure-resistant, atomic image pulls, even in the event of power loss. Its conservative memory use prevents performance degradation in low-memory environments, ensuring applications run undisturbed. Balena Engine is fully compatible with Docker containers, allowing developers to leverage existing Docker workflows while benefiting from IoT-specific optimizations.

Features & Benefits

• Docker Container Compatibility
  • An engine fully compatible with standard Docker containers, allowing seamless integration with existing Docker workflows.
• Small Footprint
  • Significantly smaller than Docker CE (3.5x smaller), packaged as a single binary, ideal for resource-constrained IoT devices.
• Multi-Architecture Support
  • Available for a wide variety of chipset architectures, supporting devices from tiny IoT sensors to large industrial gateways.
• True Container Deltas
  • Enables bandwidth-efficient updates with binary diffs, resulting in updates 10-70x smaller than pulling layers in common scenarios.
• Minimal Wear-and-Tear
  • Extracts layers as they arrive to prevent excessive writing to disk, protecting device storage from premature corruption.
• Failure-Resistant Pulls
  • Ensures atomic and durable image pulls, defending against partial container pulls even in the event of power failure.
• Conservative Memory Use
  • Prevents page cache thrashing during image pulls, ensuring applications run undisturbed even in low-memory situations.