containerd

containerd is a container runtime daemon for Linux and Windows. It manages the complete container lifecycle on a host system, including image transfer and storage, container execution and supervision, and low-level storage and network attachments. It is designed to be embedded into larger systems rather than used directly by developers or end users.

containerd works with OCI Distribution Specification compliant registries and uses runc and OS-specific libraries for most interactions with Linux and Windows container features. Its CRI plugin is built into release binaries and enabled by default, allowing containerd to run as the container runtime for a Kubernetes cluster.

containerd is a CNCF graduated project. Official release binaries are available for 64-bit Intel and AMD systems, with nightly Linux and Windows builds from the main branch. Many Linux distributions also package containerd across several architectures.