Container Ecosystem Trends You Need to Know


Since Docker launched in 2013, it has brought a level of excitement and innovation to software development that’s contagious. It has rallied support from every corner—enterprises to startups, developers to IT folk, plus the open source community, ISVs, the biggest public cloud vendors, and every tool across the software stack. Since the launch of Docker, many major milestones have served to advance the container revolution. Let’s look at some of them.

Container Orchestration Options

Getting started with your first container is fairly simple. All it takes is your laptop and a Docker client. However, running a microservices app is a whole other beast. The most difficult part is in creating, managing, and automating clusters of ephemeral containers. The first major tool to address this challenge was Mesos with its Marathon orchestrator. Having powered distributed infrastructure even before Docker, Marathon is in use in production workloads at Twitter, and in other large-scale web applications. The next orchestration tool to gain prominence was Kubernetes. In fact, today, Kubernetes leads the pack of Docker orchestration tools because of how extensible it is. It supports a broad list of programming languages, infrastructure options, and enjoys tremendous support from the container ecosystem. It isolates the application layer from the infrastructure layer, thus enabling true portability across multiple cloud vendors, and infrastructure setups. Docker Swarm, which joined the container orchestration party late, has considerable ground to cover to catch up, and initial signs point to the battle already shifting the way of Kubernetes, even though Swarm is the easiest to get started with, and is well integrated with the rest of the Docker platform. Orchestration is key to the adoption and success of containers in the enterprise. Though neither of these three are bad options, you should consider which best suits your needs.

Container Security is Improving Fast

Containers started out with weak isolation defaults. This has been changing with time. One of the key developments related to container security is the emergence of multiple capable container registries. A registry stores and scans container images and repositories for vulnerabilities. This is an important part of Docker security, as publicly available repositories from unverified publishers are a big security threat. This is one of the downsides of an open ecosystem where container images are shared easily. But having security checks in place using registries mitigates this risk. Docker Hub is the default and most popular container registry that most Docker users get started with. The major IaaS providers have their own container registries. This makes sense, especially if you’re heavily invested in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. They come with the default repository scanning, more mature access controls, and a suite of other tools for networking, storage, and monitoring. Apart from this, third-party registries like Quay, and GitLab container registry are also gaining popularity. The options for registries are more numerous than orchestration tools, and the market is wide open. Apart from registries, third-party container security services like TwistLock and Aqua Security provide security beyond the defaults.

Native Docker clients for Windows and Mac

Docker was initially a Linux-only technology that depended on special features built into the Linux kernel (those features were available only on Linux, not other Unix-like kernels). If you wanted to run Docker on Windows or a Mac, you had to use a virtual machine engine like VirtualBox and a Linux-based virtual machine for hosting your Docker environment. This setup was handy for developers who wanted to test Docker apps on Windows or Mac machines, but it was not practical as a Docker server deployment solution. Things changed in early 2016 with the release of native Docker support for Windows. This was a major development as a lot of enterprise workloads run on Windows Server. The demand to use Docker in these environments was strong. For now, there are still some major limitations to Docker when running natively on Windows. Networking is not yet fully implemented, and only Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 are supported. But the fact that Docker has gone Windows-native opens up a host of new opportunities for Docker in the Windows ecosystem.

Built-in vs. Open Source Docker Components

Docker, Inc. has built enterprise offerings (including Docker Datacenter, which is now integrated into Docker’s new Enterprise Edition platform), and they’re comprised of components from Docker itself, including the Swarm orchestrator, which is not built into Docker Engine. Docker’s interest in using its own tools to build a container stack, rather than partnering with other organizations in the container ecosystem, initially raised some concerns that Docker would ignore community standards. There was even talk last August of forking Docker because of these concerns. (The fork never happened.) More recently, these tensions have calmed as Docker has taken steps to assure customers that it isn’t out to monopolize the industry. Its active contributions to the CNCF, including most recently the open sourcing of the underlying containerd technology, are steps in this direction. And at DockerCon last month, the company moved to make its main project more modular and accessible to the community by transferring code to the Moby Project and introducing LinuxKit (you can read how these changes impact Rancher Labs, its products, and its users here and here). To be sure, Docker still has its critics. But the Docker technology stack is now more broadly open and integrated with the rest of the ecosystem than it was a year ago.

Conclusion

The container ecosystem is still in flux with improvements and changes happening by the day. New standards are being put in place as we figure out what Docker means for applications across all types of organizations. The trends highlighted in this post are indicators of a fast-maturing ecosystem. How Docker and the various vendors in this space progress from here is something to keep an eye on. Twain began his career at Google, where, among other things, he was involved in technical support for the AdWords team. His work involved reviewing stack traces, resolving issues affecting both customers and the Support team, and handling escalations. Later, he built branded social media applications and automation scripts to help startups better manage their marketing operations. Today, as a technology journalist, he helps IT magazines and startups change the way teams build and ship applications.

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