Containers and containerization have become increasingly popular in recent times thanks to the advent of cloud computing and virtualisation.
Containers offer a simplified deployment method of implementing specific infrastructure requirements. Unlike virtual machines, containers do not include a full operating system. Only the libraries and settings required to make the software work are required. As these containers can operate with the minimum amount of resources to perform the task they were designed for; this makes them a streamlined and lightweight alternative to full machine virtualisation. You can deploy up to two or three times more containers on a server than standard virtual machines.
Container support is just another example of the basic value proposition for OpenStack – that by utilising OpenStack as the foundation of a cloud strategy, you can add in new, even experimental technologies, and then deploy them to production when the time is right, all with one underlying cloud infrastructure – without compromising multi-tenant security and isolation, management and monitoring, storage and networking and more.
End users of vScaler, built on OpenStack, can now enjoy the benefits of efficiency and agility that containerisation affords. With access and support for containerized environments such as Docker, Kubernetes and Apache Mesos, vScaler containers are orders of magnitude faster to provision and much lighter weight to build and define when compared to full software builds or virtual machine images.
Docker
Docker allows users to run and manage applications side-by-side in isolated containers to get better compute density. Enterprises use Docker to build agile software delivery pipelines to ship new features faster, more securely and with confidence for both Linux and Windows Server apps. Docker automates the repetitive tasks of setting up and configuring development environments so that developers can focus on what matters: building great software.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery.
Mesos
Apache Mesos is an open-source distributed systems kernel at the heart of the Mesosphere DC/OS. It abstracts the entire datacentre into a single pool of computing resources, simplifying running distributed systems at scale. Mesos is built using the same principles as the Linux kernel, only at a different level of abstraction. The Mesos kernel runs on every machine and provides applications (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Elasticsearch) with API’s for resource management and scheduling across entire datacenter and cloud environments.
Looking to the future, as our reliance on Virtual Machines decreases, containers will provide for much higher compute densities resulting in an overall decrease in the cost of cloud computing.