Examples described herein generally relate to hosting virtual memory backed kernel isolated containers. A server includes at least one physical processor and at least one physical computer memory addressable via physical memory addresses. The at least one physical computer memory stores executable code configured to provide at least one host including a kernel and at least one kernel isolated container within the at least one host. The host allocates virtual memory having virtual memory addresses to a respective container of the at least one kernel isolated container. The host pins a subset of the virtual memory addresses to a subset of the physical memory addresses. The host performs a direct memory access operation or device memory-mapped input-output operation of the respective container on the subset of the physical memory addresses. At least part of the physical computer memory that is not pinned is oversubscribed.