Jim Armstrong
Author Archives: Jim Armstrong
- Home → Author's archive:
Jim Armstrong
Top Questions Answered: Docker and Kubernetes? I Thought You Were Competitors!
Last week, we covered some of the questions about container infrastructure from our recent webinar “Demystifying VMs, Containers, and Kubernetes in the Hybrid Cloud Era.” This week, we’ll tackle the questions about Kubernetes, Docker and the software supply chain. One common misperception that we heard in the webinar — that Docker and Kubernetes are competitors. In fact, Kubernetes is better with Docker. And Docker is better with Kubernetes.
Docker And Kubernetes? I thought you were competitors?
We hear questions along this line all the time. Here are some quick answers:
Can I use Kubernetes with Docker?
- Yes, they go together. You need a container runtime like Docker Engine (based on open source containerd) to start and stop containers on a host.
- When you have a bunch of containers running across a bunch of hosts, you need an orchestrator to manage things like: Where will the next container start? How do you make a container highly available? How do you control which containers can communicate with other containers? That’s where an orchestrator such as Kubernetes comes in.
- The container runtime and the orchestrator are the two core atomic units that Continue reading
Top Questions: Containers and VMs Together
We had a great turnout to our recent webinar “Demystifying VMs, Containers, and Kubernetes in the Hybrid Cloud Era” and tons of questions came in via the chat — so many that we weren’t able to answer all of them in real-time or in the Q&A at the end. We’ll cover the answers to the top questions in two posts (yes, there were a lot of questions!).
First up, we’ll take a look at IT infrastructure and operations topics, including whether you should deploy containers in VMs or make the leap to containers on bare metal.
VMs or Containers?
Among the top questions was whether users should just run a container platform on bare metal or run it on top of their virtual infrastructure — Not surprising, given the webinar topic.
- A Key Principle: one driver for containerization is to abstract applications and their dependencies away from the underlying infrastructure. It’s our experience that developers don’t often care about the underlying infrastructure (or at least they’d prefer not to). Docker and Kubernetes are infrastructure agnostic. We have no real preference.
- The goal – yours and ours: provide a platform that developers love to use, AND provide Continue reading
Accelerate Application Delivery with Application Templates in Docker Desktop Enterprise
Application Templates enable developers to build modern applications using a library of predefined and organization-approved application and service templates, without requiring prior knowledge of Docker commands. By providing re-usable “scaffolding” for developing modern container-based applications, Application Templates accelerate developer onboarding and improve productivity.
The Application Templates themselves include many of the discrete components required for developing a new application, including the Dockerfile, custom base images, common compose service YAML, and application parameters (external ports and upstream image versions). They can even include boilerplate code and code editor configs.
Docker’s Contribution to Authentication for Windows Containers in Kubernetes
Challenges with gMSA in Containerized Environments
Aside from being used for authentication across multiple instances, gMSAs solves for two additional problems:- Containers cannot join the domain, and;
- When you start a container, you never really know which host in your cluster it’s going to run on. You might have three replicas running across hosts A, B, and C today and then tomorrow you have four replicas running across hosts Q, R, S, and T.
What’s in a Container Platform?
Fresh off the heels of DockerCon and the announcement of Docker Enterprise 3.0, an end-to-end and dev-to-cloud container platform, I wanted to share some thoughts on what we mean when we say “complete container platform”.
Choice and Flexibility
A complete solution has to meet the needs of different kinds of applications and users – not just cloud native projects but legacy and brownfield applications on both Linux and Windows, too. At a high level, one of the goals of modernization – the leading reason organizations are adopting container platforms – is to rid ourselves of technical debt. Organizations want the freedom to create their apps based on the “right” stack and running in the “right” place, even though what’s “right” may vary from app to app. So the container platform running those applications should be flexible and open to support those needs, rather than rigidly tying application teams to a single OS or virtualization and cloud model.
High-Velocity Innovation
To deliver high velocity innovation your developers are a key constituent for the container platform. That means the container platform should extend to their environment, so that developers are building and testing on the same APIs that will be used Continue reading
From Manufacturing to Climate Analytics: DockerCon speakers on real-world use cases
DockerCon brings industry leaders and experts of the container world to one event where they share their knowledge, experience and guidance. This year is no different. For the next few weeks, we’re going to highlight a few of our amazing speakers and the talks they will be leading.
In this third highlight, we have several speakers who will be sharing their real world Docker use cases and learnings. These are the folks who have already put things in place and are here to share and inspire. Interested in transforming legacy applications? Or maybe large scale data analytics is your focus. Maybe you’re a software vendor – or have plans to be – and want to learn about containerizing your application. To learn more, register now to attend the session featuring real Docker users like you.
In case you missed them, check out our previous speaker highlights:
Transforming a 15+ Year Old Semiconductor Manufacturing Environment
More on Jeanie’s session here.
|
Jeanie Schwenk Engineer, Scrum Master and Agile Project Manager at Jireh Semiconductor |
|
|
What is your breakout about? I was just starting to look at Docker at this time last year. Our company’s Continue reading |
Feature Friday: A Chat With Security Experts
DockerCon brings industry leaders and experts of the container world to one event where they share their knowledge, experience and guidance. This year is no different. For the next few weeks, we’re going to highlight a few of our amazing speakers and the talks they will be leading.
In this second highlight, we have several industry experts on container and application security that we’re excited to have sharing their knowledge at DockerCon. We’re going to have sessions covering network security, a dissection of a real world Kubernetes vulnerability (and what to do about it), encrypted containers, and the new AWS Firecracker “micro-VM” for containers, just to name a few.
In case you missed it, you can also see our first speaker highlight here, featuring storage, service mesh and networking experts.
Zero Trust Networks Come to Docker Enterprise Kubernetes
More on their session here.
|
Tigera Software Developer |
Docker Technical Alliances |
|
What is your breakout about? Brent: Docker Enterprise with Calico for networking being used in conjunction with Istio is an exciting intersection of securing various layers of networking – all from a single policy interface. Spike: The Docker-Calico-Istio combination Continue reading | |
Feature Friday: DockerCon speakers sound off on Kubernetes, Service Mesh and More
DockerCon brings industry leaders and experts of the container world to one event where they share their knowledge, experience and guidance. This year is no different. For the next few weeks, we’re going to highlight a few of our amazing speakers and the talks they will be leading.
In this first highlight, we have a few of our own Docker speakers that are covering storage and networking topics, including everything from container-level networking on up to full cross-infrastructure and cross-orchestrator networking.
Persisting State for Windows Workloads in Kubernetes
More on their session here.
|
Docker Software Engineer |
Docker Software Engineer |
|
What is your breakout about? We’ll be talking about persistent storage options for Windows workloads on Kubernetes. While a lot of options exist for Linux workloads we will look at dynamic provisioning scenarios for Windows workloads. Why should people go to your session? Persistence in Windows containers is very limited. Our talk aims to tackle this hard problem and provide practical solutions. The audience will learn about ways to achieve persistent storage in their Windows container workloads and they will also hear about future direction. What is your favorite DockerCon moment? | |
Docker Desktop Enterprise Preview: Version Packs
This is the first in a series of articles we are publishing to provide more details on Docker Desktop Enterprise, which we announced at DockerCon Barcelona. Keep up with the latest Docker Desktop Enterprise news and release updates by signing up for the Docker Desktop Enterprise announcement list.
Docker’s engineers have been hard at work completing features and getting everything in ship-shape (pun intended) following our announcement of Docker Desktop Enterprise, a new desktop product that is the easiest, fastest and most secure way to develop production-ready containerized applications and the easiest way for developers to get Kubernetes running on their own machine.
In the first post of this series I want to highlight how we are working to bridge the gap between development and production with Docker Desktop Enterprise using our new Version Packs feature. Version Packs let you easily swap your Docker Engine and Kubernetes orchestrator versions to match the versions running in production on your Docker Enterprise clusters. For example, imagine you have a production environment running Docker Enterprise 2.0. As a developer, in order to make sure you don’t use any APIs or incompatible features that will break when you push an application to production Continue reading
Introducing Docker Desktop Enterprise
Nearly 1.4 million developers use Docker Desktop every single day because it is the simplest and easiest way for container-based development. Docker Desktop provides the Docker Engine with Swarm and Kubernetes orchestrators right on the desktop, all from a single install. While this is great for an individual user, in enterprise environments administrators often want to automate the Docker Desktop installation and ensure everyone on the development team has the same configuration following enterprise requirements and creating applications based on architectural standards.
Docker Desktop Enterprise is a new desktop offering that is the easiest, fastest and most secure way to create and deliver production-ready containerized applications. Developers can work with frameworks and languages of their choice, while IT can securely configure, deploy and manage development environments that align to corporate standards and practices. This enables organizations to rapidly deliver containerized applications from development to production.
Enterprise Manageability That Helps Accelerate Time-to-Production
Docker Desktop Enterprise provides a secure way to configure, deploy and manage developer environments while enforcing safe development standards that align to corporate policies and practices. IT teams and application architects can present developers with application templates designed specifically for their team, to bootstrap and standardize Continue reading
Get to Know Docker Desktop
Today on the Edge release channels, we released a new beta version of Docker Desktop, the product formerly known as Docker for Windows and Docker for Mac. You can download this new Edge release for both Windows and macOS. Docker Desktop enables you to start coding and containerizing in minutes and is the easiest way to run Docker Engine, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes on Mac and Windows. In addition to simple setup, Docker Desktop also includes other great features and capabilities such as:
- Fast edit-test cycles with volume mounting for code and data, including file change notifications.
- If you want to switch from Swarm to Kubernetes for orchestration, it’s a click of a button in the Docker Desktop UI.
- On Windows desktops, you can develop both Windows and Linux containers with Docker Desktop using a toggle selection in the UI.
- Docker Desktop handles the setup and teardown of lightweight VMs on both Windows and macOS, using Hyper-V on Windows desktops and Hyperkit on macOS.
- Built-in enterprise network support allows Docker Desktop to work with choice of VPNs and proxies.
You may have already noticed the new Docker Desktop name on www.docker.com, and over the next few months we Continue reading
Kubernetes is Now Available In Docker Desktop Stable Channel
Back in January we made Kubernetes available in our Edge release channels for Docker Desktop on macOS and on Windows. Today we’re excited to announce that Kubernetes orchestration has graduated to the Stable release channels for Docker Desktop!
Docker Desktop is the fastest and simplest way to get a Kubernetes cluster running on your desktop machine, while still giving you the freedom to choose Docker Swarm if you prefer. Docker Developer Advocate Elton Stoneman recently created a short video demonstrating Docker Desktop on both Windows and Mac. In the video, Elton demonstrates:
- Enabling Kubernetes and alternating between Kubernetes and Swarm
- Integrating Docker Desktop and containers in to your environment and workflow
- Deploying .NET, NodeJS, and Java apps with Docker Desktop, including deploying to Kubernetes with a Compose file
Click image below to watch video:
Docker Desktop is simple to install on macOS and Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, and is available at the links below. If you’re already using Docker Desktop and you’re in the Stable channel (which is default) then you should see an auto-update notification soon.
What You Can Do with Kubernetes on your desktop?
Docker Desktop is the most popular way to configure a Docker dev Continue reading
Introducing Docker Application Guides
In April of 2017 we announced the Modernize Traditional Applications (MTA) program at Docker. The goal of MTA is to take the vast back catalogs of existing applications that are running in enterprise organizations today, and bring them to a modern container platform, without requiring extensive rewrites or refactoring. I’m excited to share part of our learning from the MTA program and announce the release of Docker Application Guides.
Oracle WebLogic MedRec Sample Application on Docker Enterprise Edition
Docker Application Guides demonstrate how to deploy popular enterprise applications – Oracle WebLogic and IBM MQ with WebSphere Liberty – on Docker Enterprise and Docker Desktop. Application Guides include example architectures and guidance for selecting Certified Docker container images from Docker Store and deploying a prototype application, orchestrated by Docker Swarm or Kubernetes.
It is important to note that Docker Application Guides are one piece of our prescriptive Docker customer journey to production. In addition to the knowledge transfer and process transformation that come with our full approach, Application Guides provide a reference for deploying common enterprise applications on the Docker Enterprise platform.
The first Docker Application Guides are designed to help you plan and deploy an Oracle WebLogic application Continue reading
Your Personal Journey at DockerCon
DockerCon San Francisco 2018 is here! From all of us at Docker HQ we want to welcome those that have travelled to be with us in San Francisco. For this year’s DockerCon we wanted to create an experience that uniquely helps YOU figure out where you are today and where you want to go next with your containerized applications and operations. As you get to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, you’ll see signs guiding you towards various stages of the technology adoption journey. Below we’ve summarized common traits that customer like you have at each phase of the journey: once you identify where you click to jump down to some last minute guidance of sessions and activities that we think will be most helpful for each stage.
Click to jump directly to your journey stage:
- Getting Started: If you’re new to containerization and trying to figure what this Docker thing is and why people are using it, this DockerCon experience is for you
- First Project: Check out this experience if you’ve got the fundamentals of containerization down and are ready to move on to using the Docker container platform on a real project and build your core Continue reading
Top 5 Recommendations for the IT Professional at DockerCon 2018
DockerCon 2018 is right around the corner and it’s not just a conference for developers! We’ve created experiences and activities designed with the IT professional in mind.
Registration is open so secure your spot and begin planning your conference experience.
“What gets me excited about Docker is how liberating their platform is for technologists. As a technologist, Docker gives me the freedom, flexibility, and makes it extremely easy to run and deploy apps on modern infrastructure.” – Arjuna Rivera, I2 Labs Leader, Lockheed Martin
DockerCon is the premier container industry event, where you’ll see examples of Docker best practices that you can implement within your company, gain hands-on experience of the Docker container platform, including Kubernetes, security, networking and storage, plus 
learn how to bring the Docker container platform in to your organization to modernize applications and streamline your deployment and maintenance operations.
Networking is key benefit to a conference and at DockerCon we’ve made it easy to find peers in our Hallway Track. Whether you’re looking for somebody to help answer your questions, or you have wisdom to share with others, the Hallway Track is like your own custom breakout session.
Here are our top 5 recommendations for Continue reading
Plan Your DockerCon 2018 Conference Experience: Everything an Enterprise Architect Needs to Know
DockerConSan Francisco 2018 is just around the corner and we’re here to help Enterprise Architects learn what Docker can do for them. DockerCon isn’t just for developers and we want to help you find the sessions and experiences that we’ve created that are developed with this role in mind:
In 2015, I attended DockerCon for the first time. I was sitting in a chair and listening to the amazing stories and ideas presented by speakers at the conference, which set off a chain of events that led to today. I feel privileged, and am really looking forward to being on stage and sharing our transformational journey to inspire the people who would sit in that chair.
Alex Iankoulski, Principal Software Architect, Baker Hughes GE
The first thing to notice is that as you build your DockerCon agenda this year, we have a “Journey” theme that will help guide you during the conference. Whether you’re just “Getting Started” in your learning about containerization or you want to hear about “Innovation” using the Docker container platform for data sciences, AI, machine learning, and IoT, we have sessions that will be just right for you.
You can will also find content we’ve Continue reading
Docker for Windows Desktop… Now With Kubernetes!
Today we are excited to announce the beta for Docker for Windows Desktop with integrated Kubernetes is now available in the edge channel! This release includes Kubernetes 1.8, just like the Docker for Mac and Docker Enterprise Edition and will allow you to develop Linux containers.
The easiest way to get Kubernetes on your desktop is here.
Simply check the box and go
What You Can Do with Kubernetes on your desktop?
Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows are the most popular way to configure a Docker dev environment, and are each used everyday by millions of developers to build, test, and debug containerized apps. The beauty of building with Docker for Mac or Windows is that you can deploy the exact same set of Docker container images on your desktop as you do on your production systems with Docker EE.
Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows are used for building, testing and preparing to ship applications, whereas Docker EE provides the ability to secure and manage your applications in production at scale. You eliminate the “it worked on my machine” problem because you run the same Docker containers on the same Docker engines in development, testing, and production environments, along with the Continue reading
Docker for Mac with Kubernetes
You heard about it at DockerCon Europe and now it is here: we are proud to announce that Docker for Mac with beta Kubernetes support is now publicly available as part of the Edge release channel. We hope you are as excited as we are!
With this release you can now run a single node Kubernetes cluster right on your Mac and use both kubectl commands and docker commands to control your containers.
First, a few things to keep in mind:
- Docker for Mac required
Kubernetes features are only accessible on macOS for now; Docker for Windows and Docker Enterprise Edition betas will follow at a later date. If you need to install a new copy of Docker for Mac you can download it from the Docker Store. - Edge channel required
Kubernetes support is still considered experimental with this release, so to enable the download and use of Kubernetes components you must be on the Edge channel. The Docker for Mac version should be 17.12.0-ce-mac45 or later after updating. - Already using other Kubernetes tools?
If you are already running a version of kubectl pointed at another environment, for example minikube, you will want to follow the activation Continue reading
The Journey to 150,000 Containers at PayPal
PayPal is committed to democratizing financial services and empowering people and businesses to join and thrive in the global economy. Their open digital payments platform gives 218 million active account holders the confidence to connect and transact in new and powerful ways. To achieve this, PayPal has built a global presence that must be highly available to all its users: if PayPal is down, the effects ripple down to many of their small business customers, who rely on PayPal as their sole payment processing solution.
PayPal turned to Docker Enterprise Edition to help them achieve new operational efficiencies, including a 50% increase in the speed of their build-test-deploy cycles. At the same time, they increased application availability through Docker’s dynamic placement capabilities and infrastructure independence; and they improved security by using Docker to automate and granularly control access to resources. On top of the operational benefits, PayPal’s use of Docker empowered developers to innovate and try new tools and frameworks that previously were difficult to introduce due to PayPal’s application and operational complexity.
Meghdoot Bhattacharya, Cloud Engineer at PayPal, shared the journey his team has helped PayPal undertake over the course of the past two years to introduce Docker in Continue reading
Intesa Sanpaolo Builds a Resilient Foundation for Banking With Docker Enterprise Edition
Intesa Sanpaolo is the largest bank in Italy and maintains a network of over 5,000 banking branches across Europe and North Africa. With nearly 19 million customers and €739 billion in assets, Intesa Sanpaolo is an integral part of the financial fabric and as such, Italian regulations require that they keep their business and applications online to serve their customers.
As a bank that can trace its roots back to the early 1800s, the majority of Intesa’s edge applications are still monolithic and hard to move between data centers, never mind migrate to the cloud. Diego Braga, Intesa IT Infrastructure Architect, looked to Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) at the recommendation of his Kiratech business partner Lorenzo Fontana to improve their application availability, portability and add cloud friendly application delivery. With Docker EE, Intesa was able to consolidate infrastructure by nearly 60%, thus saving significant money over their previous design, while also enabling higher application availability across regional data centers and preparing themselves for the cloud.
Prior to the Docker EE implementation, not only were the applications monoliths, but Intesa maintained two separate data centers as mirrors of each other to achieve high availability. This design required excess, cold standby hardware capacity in Continue reading