Ubuntu Gets Container-Friendly "Snappy" Core

judgecorp writes: Canonical just announced Ubuntu Core, which uses containers instead of packages. It's the biggest Ubuntu shakeup for 20 years, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, and is based on a tiny core, which will run Docker and other container technology better, quicker and with greater security than other Linux distros. Delivered as alpha code today, it's going to become a supported product, designed to compete with both CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic, the two leading container-friendly Linux approaches. Shuttleworth says it came about because Canonical found it had solved the "cloud" problems (delivering and updating apps and keeping security) by accident — in its work on a mobile version of Ubuntu.

Comments

Re:What about things like the JVM inside a contain

[Fwipp]

Each container would contain all of the stuff it needs to run - in this case, Java + associated modules.

It simplifies stuff, because if one server requires Foo v1.11.4 but another needs Foo v1.10.8, neither server "sees" the other. You simply configure each container separately, without worrying what the other container's doing. When distributing the container, all you have to do is send out one image. If you want to run 12 containers on a host, that's cool. If you want to run only 1, that's fine too. And that same container will work just fine whether it's running on the server or the new kid's development laptop.

It's not an all-or-nothing approach, so you can choose if you want the database to live in a container of its own, on the host, in the app container, or somewhere distant.

Re:I Don't Get It

[ArsonSmith]

being able to go from zero to fully functional and testable running application with mulitple tiers in minutes is a bit different.

Being able to completely uninstall without dpkg-old or random .bak files laying around is kinda nice.

rolling back 3 versions ago is as simple as
docker run

Honestly I've been doing this for 22 years and docker is the first time I've looked at a tech and it scared me. It is going to relegate systems administration to little more than rack and stackers. The current DevOps trend is going to become just Dev and everything will be code.

If you're an administrator of pretty much any type you better start learning to program. The days of long lived static apps with a full time support staff is going to go away. The art of setting and configuring the exact combination of packages, standards, access etc will be gone.