Introduction to Docker Containers
As published by Maureen (2013), an open source work in the form of a project to automate different deployments of applications which are bind together in a container along with all the required data, executable files, application programs so that the programs can run independent of the operating system or the system environment is called Docker container. Dockers are built on the Linux Kernel infrastructure which provides the abstract isolation. The file systems which can be used are aufs and a few others (Maureen, 2013).
How does Docker Containers make Architecture for Organizations Modern?
Dockers provide the same functionality as provided by the virtual machines however Dockers are very advanced and provide a lot of advantages over virtual machines. As explained by the company Docker.com (2016), when a particular application is in the Docker container, the user or the organization need to worry about setting up various different system environments or separate language dependent tools. The focus is more on building the applications and once put in the containers, the applications can run anywhere anytime. This is the most advanced version of creating an executable environment. This makes an organization very modern because now they are not talking about the languages which are available, tools or expertise which needs to be hired because of the availability of existing software and languages etc. Now the organizations can just look at what needs to be done and don’t have to worry about the technology. This empowers organizations in three primary areas:
Accelerate Developer Onboarding – The organizations and project teams now don’t have to spend a lot of time in setting up the specific requirement with the required software to run all the applications locally. Now they can just build the applications and programs and put them in containers to run anywhere. This speeds up the implementation time and saves a lot of cost as well in the long term.
Supports Developer creativity – The capability of putting the developed applications and programs in containers takes away the challenge of restricting the developers to code in a specific language. Now the developers can utilize multiple languages for the features they want to innovate and can club together the best of different software stack
Eliminate Inconsistencies of the Environment – The biggest challenge when implementing a solution is that sometimes it works very well in the testing environment however it fails or doesn’t work to its best capabilities in the production environment. Now this problem is the problem of past and in the modern container time, the application will work exactly as required in every environment (Docker.com, 2016).
What after Docker?
In the technology space, we can never say that we have reached the final stage as this is always evolving with new inventions and breakthroughs every day. As Rush (2104), mentioned in his article that Dockers is a way forward towards a new era of cloud computing to provide more secure and powerful processing options. There are many platforms like Ruby and Python for which it is not possible to create a virtual machine environment without the build tools and thus, there is a lot of innovation which is left in near future. The fragmented operating system called “CoreOS” is not very robust at this stage and a lot of work needs to be done there as well. The next thing is “Immutable Servers” which are kind of deployment which mandates that there can’t be any updates made in terms of system updates, software or operating system patches, or even any configuration changes in the run time production environment. Another is “Unikernels” which integrates the compiled programming code down to the operating system code thus making it virtually a part of the operating system. Thus no extra drivers or resources would be needed to run any application which is built with this concept (Rush, 2014).
I believe there would be a time when the innovation reaches a level where we don’t have to install any software on servers and we can simply push a small package that even includes an operating system environment to run any piece of information or application without supervision.
References
Docker.com. (2016). Transforming Business with Docker. Retrieved April 22 from https://www.docker.com/enterprise
Maureen, O. (2013). Ben Golub, Who Sold Gluster to Red Hat, Now Running dotCloud. SYS-CON Media. Retrieved April 22 from http://maureenogara.sys-con.com/node/2747331
Rush, D. (2014). After Docker: Unikernels and Immutable Infrastructure. Retrieved April 22 from https://medium.com/adopting-microservices-architecture/after-docker-unikernels-and-immutable-infrastructure-93d5a91c849e#.snbg5wrcs
