Building a Rust-based Web Server as a Unikernel with OPS: A Practical Guide

Unikernels are lightweight, single-purpose virtual machine images that package an application together with only the operating system components it actually needs. They significantly reduce the attack surface, improve performance, and minimize resource usage. In this paper, we explore how to leverage the OPS toolchain to build a Rust based web server as a unikernel. We walk through the concept of unikernels, the Rust application code, and the steps required to convert this application into a bootable image using OPS. Finally, we demonstrate running the resulting unikernel using QEMU on Ubuntu inside Windows Subsystem for Linux
(WSL).