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Glossary

What is kata Containers?

Answer in brief

An open-source runtime that runs each container (or pod) inside its own lightweight VM while keeping the standard container interface.

By the Agent Sandboxes editors · Updated

Kata Containers in agent sandboxes

Kata Containers plugs into containerd/CRI-O and Kubernetes as a runtime class, so teams keep their container tooling while each pod gets a dedicated guest kernel. It can use several hypervisors, including QEMU, Cloud Hypervisor and Firecracker.

It is a common way to self-host VM-isolated agent sandboxes on Kubernetes.

Sources

  1. katacontainers.io/

Cite this page

Agent Sandboxes. (2026). What is kata Containers?. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 8, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/glossary/kata-containers/

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