Containers have become a critical part of the software development process and quickly become a key component in infrastructure management. Containers help organizations improve the efficiency and agility of their IT infrastructure while reducing costs and risks associated with traditional virtualization techniques. The following is an overview of containerization, how it can benefit your organization, and how to get started using containers in your development environment.
What is containerization?
Containerization is the process of packaging an application with all of its dependencies into a single package. These packages are called “containers,” and they can be moved around easily without affecting the functionality of the applications they contain. Containers are lightweight since they only include what’s necessary for running an application, making them faster than virtual machines (VMs).
Containers also isolate processes within themselves so that if one container crashes or becomes compromised, it won’t affect any other containers running on that host machine. This makes them very secure from outside threats like hackers looking to access your data through your containerized apps!Providers like JFrog and Canonical offer container management platforms that allow you to create and deploy your containers.
The benefits of containerization
Containers are more secure than virtual machines. In a containerized environment, applications are run in their sandboxes, which contain all the dependencies needed for that application to run. This means there’s no need for an OS specific to that application, so there’s no risk of infection from outside sources.
Containerization makes it easier to build secure containerized applications since you can use tools like Docker or Kubernetes without having to install additional programs on your system or learn new ones.
Containers are faster and easier to manage than virtual machines (VMs). VMs require hypervisors such as VMware ESXi or KVM on bare metal servers before they can be used; however, containers do not need hypervisors because each application inside a VM has its operating system instance, but with containers, each app only requires Linux kernel features. Hence, there’s no need for extra layers of software running on top of the host OS — this makes them much smaller than VMs since they do not take up as much space on your server!
How to get started with containerization
The first step to containerization is understanding what it is and how it works. A container is a way of packaging up an application or a piece of software so that it can be easily moved from machine to machine without having to install anything else. It’s similar in some ways to how you might take your clothes out of the closet, fold them neatly into a suitcase, put on your coat, walk out the door and go somewhere else—only instead of things like clothes and shoes being transported inside the suitcase (or “container”), we’re talking about applications here: think WordPress or MySQL databases.
Containerization platforms are tools for building containers for various purposes. They make it easy for you to get started with making containers that do everything from run web servers or host websites; run applications like Elasticsearch clusters; perform image processing tasks like resizing images or optimizing photos; run applications that need high-performance computing resources such as those used by Hadoop MapReduce jobs; and more!
Optimizing your containers for development and production environments
The next step is to optimize your containers for each environment. For example, you can use a local development environment to test out changes and ensure they work before deploying them. You can also use a staging environment as an intermediate stage between production and production. You can get feedback on whether or not the new changes are working out well before committing them to your live site.
How does a container orchestration tool fit into this?
Container orchestration tools are a layer of abstraction between the application and the infrastructure. They allow you to deploy, scale, update and manage containers reliably so that you don’t have to worry about what’s happening under the hood. Some of these tools include Kubernetes and Mesos.
Examples of container orchestration tools:
- Docker Swarm
- Kubernetes (Apache Mesos)
Conclusion
The career of a software developer can be a very rewarding one. It is possible to earn good money and work at your own pace, but there are many things that you need to do to get ahead in this field. Containers are great because they make it easy for developers like yourself to create their applications from scratch or use existing ones as building blocks for new projects.
