Rocket is an application container engine developed for modern production cloud-native environments. It features a pod-native approach, a pluggable execution environment, and a well-defined surface area that makes it ideal for integration with other systems. The core execution unit of rkt is the pod, a collection of one or more applications executing in a shared context (Rocket's pods are synonymous with the concept in the Kubernetes orchestration system). Rocket allows users to apply different configurations (like isolation parameters) at both pod-level and at the more granular per-application level. Rocket's architecture means that each pod executes directly in the classic Unix process model (i.e. there is no central daemon), in a self-contained, isolated environment. rkt implements a modern, open, standard container format, the App Container (appc) spec, but can also execute other container images, like those created with Docker.
CoreOS Rocket mindshare
As of February 2025, the mindshare of CoreOS Rocket in the Container Virtualization category
stands at 18.4%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
