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Docker Turns 1: What's the Future For Open Source Container Tech?
darthcamaro (735685) writes "Docker has become one of the most hyped open-source projects in recent years, making it hard to believe the project only started one year ago. In that one year, Docker has now gained the support of Red Hat and other major Linux vendors. What does the future hold for Docker? Will it overtake other forms of virtualization or will it just be a curiosity?"
Isn't docker just a wrapper around real container techs? (union filesystems, cgroups/namespaces/containers (lxc basically), etc) with a cloud-init style deployment script?
Docker has become one of the most hyped open-source projects in recent years
The pants? Yeah, those are OK. They don't last that well.
If I've heard of Docker once before, I don't remember it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The idea of docker is cool but the implementation needs works. It's pretty complicated to understand compared to say VMware or VirtualBox. Especially the versioning stuff, it's really annoying. It's like combining git or svn and virtual machines. You get the obscure weird architecture of a version control system combined with the configuration complexity of a VM. It's pretty confusing even for seasoned professionals.
My wife says my ass looks good in Dockers.
Since nobody else is commenting, I guess that I'm not the only one that had never heard of Docker.
The story doesn't bother to summarize what Docker is. Or even give a link to an explanation. That may not be completely unreasonable, because it's hard to find any understandable information on the main website either. Apparently a "container" is a method of delivering an application that is geared towards VMs and cloud computing, but that's about all I got out of it.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
... but rationalizing it. Sometimes you just need to run more or less isolated single apps, not for a full blown OS. In a lot of usage scenarios is far more efficient, (both in disk/memory/cpu usage and app density) and probably more flexible. In others full OS virtualization or running on dedicated hardware may be the best option.
It also brings a virtualization-like approach for apps in the cloud. You can have cointainerized apps in aws, google apps and many others, something like having a vm inside a vm.
Is not the only solution of its kind. Google is heavily using containers in Omega (you can try their container stack with lmctfy), you can use openvz, lxc, or solaris zones or bsd jails. But the way that docker mixes containers (not just lxc by 0.9) with union fs, making them portable and to have inheritance, is a touch of genius.
The missing pieces are being added by different projects. CoreOS as a dedicated OS for containers (that coupled with etcd and fleet could become a big player in a near future), OpenStack/OpenShift bringing manageability, and maybe someone could bring to the table what Omega does with google containers.
But.. but.. aren't you amazed?!? It's only been a year since that thing you never heard of did something you aren't being told?!?!! Who says journalism is dead?
Link 1: Wow, look how much uses Docker!
Link 2: Okay, docker works as some sort of VMy thing, oh and hype hype hype in case you missed link #1.
I rarely complain about FPs, even blatant Slashvertisements... But seriously? Yay, something wildly successful (that I've never heard of) has lasted a year. Woo-hoo! Pass me a beer.
Sun, when it still shone, used containers heavily, because they made "dedicate a machine" trivial.
You could give a product or product suite a dedicated machine, and have netstat or vnstat report on just the behavior of the one program. You could clone a copy of production for the developers to base their next release on, you could hand a release to QA to test hand have them hand it back, and finally you could hand a tested machine to production to start exposure testing.
This allowed a much more agile cycle than having to re-install a product for development, install it again for test, then fail to reproduce a problem and have tor reinstall both, and finally reinstall the "fixed" config on prod and have the bug come back! Far better quality, and far less work.
I'm a capacity planner, so I liked it because I could give a "machine" a minimum guarantee of 20% of a 64-cpu machine, and know that it it would give back the capacity it didn't use, something that "hard" LPARS can't do.
davecb@spamcop.net
I had never heard of "Docker" before today, nor heard any hype about it.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
On the other hand, it's good that most Docker deployments would only be running a single process and have an easy way to deploy an updated version. As you mentioned lots of people using Docker also use Jenkins for doing automated unit tests. So at least when they've created an updated version they can subject it to testing.
I wouldn't dismiss it from the start, we'll have to see how this plays out.
New things are always on the horizon
You say that like its a bad thing.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Run a minimalistic Linux box? Check.
Put software on a virtual disk so I can chroot with a restriction to the device? Check.
Build software statically linked to the libraries in the build directory so they don't need access to the rest of the system? Check.
Know that it would be popular and might make monies? Doh!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.