LXD is a container effort created by Canonical, developers of the Ubuntu Linux operating system distribution, that works in conjunction with LXC to make LXC-based containers easier to use.
LXD does this in part via the use of a back-end daemon that supports a REST API and a simple CLI client that works with both the local and remote daemons via the REST API.
The Three Components of LXD
Pronounced as “lex-dee,” LXD comprises three components:
The last of these three components, the OpenStack Nova plugin, enables lxd hosts to be used as compute nodes that run workloads on containers rather than virtual machines. Canonical has included this plugin in Ubuntu since the 15.10 “Wily Werewolf” release, and it enables OpenStack instances to be scheduled as Linux containers.
Canonical touts LXD as being secure by design, scalable (from containers on personal PCs up to thousands of compute nodes), intuitive, image-based, and capable of live migrations.
