MOS4 vs Balena

Boundary

Container fleet management vs typed micro service runtime.

flowchart LR
  subgraph Bal["Balena — container fleet"]
    B1[Container A]
    B2[Container B]
    B1 <-.TCP / sockets.-> B2
  end
  subgraph M["MOS4 — typed micro services"]
    M1[Micro service A]
    M2[Micro service B]
    M1 <-->|protobuf bus| M2
  end

SDK

Five languages, CI-enforced image budgets.

MCM ships ready-to-deploy OCI containers in Python, Rust, Go, C, and C++ covering streaming service call, request-response, and event pub/sub against a GNSS MQTT bridge. Each language-scenario pair has a CI-enforced image-size budget — 15 matrix cells, tested reference starting points.

FAQ

The questions we hear most.

• Can MOS4 run inside a Balena container?

  Running MOS4 inside a Balena-managed container is a coexistence pattern that teams have explored. It is not a Munic-supported deployment topology. The recommended path is MOS4 as the primary runtime with its own OCI workload management. Talk to engineering to discuss your specific topology.

• Why use typed protobuf IPC instead of container-to-container TCP?

  Schema is checked at build time by buf lint and cargo build, not at runtime after a container restart. A component that miscalls an interface fails at compile time. The wire format is the same whether the components run on one device or across devices.

• Do I lose container isolation with MOS4?

  No. mos-container-manager (MCM) enforces CPU, memory, and I/O limits per container via Linux cgroups v2 as a contract at start time. Container supervision polls each container /metrics endpoint. Linux namespaces remain available.

• How does fleet OTA compare?

  Balena ships container images — the update unit is the full container. mos-update ships per-component delta packages: Ed25519-signed, A/B partitions, automatic rollback via bootcount. The smallest replaceable unit is a single service, not a full image. Cohort and canary OTA via the Munic cloud companion.

• Is MOS4 the right answer if I only need container fleet management?

  If you only need to ship Docker images to a fleet, Balena is the simpler answer. MOS4 is the right answer when the programme needs typed component IPC, vehicle or industrial domain primitives, on-device AI inference, or component-granularity OTA.

• Can I reuse existing Docker Compose files?

  Yes. MCM parses Docker Compose v3 files, so teams with existing Compose-based development workflows can bring them to embedded targets without learning new configuration syntax.