5 years later, where are you on your Docker journey?

Docker is turning five the week of March 19-25, 2018 and in celebration of this event, we would like to turn the spotlight to our users – the customers, partners, individuals and organizations that are using the Docker platform every day. From scientific use cases in the field of medical and space research to more traditional use cases in large banks and insurance companies, Docker’s adoption is only accelerating with everyone from individual developers to global corporations. Here are some of the key figures showing the widespread adoption of Docker across the community and within enterprises.

Docker has evolved from a container runtime to Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), a secure enterprise-ready container platform that brings unmatched freedom of choice to enterprises, while providing a foundation for their digital and multi-cloud initiatives. Millions of users rely on Docker, downloading 100M container images a day, and over 450 companies have turned to Docker Enterprise Edition – including hundreds of the largest enterprises in the world. With such vast adoption, the range of stories to tell and the diverse set of use cases continues to grow. So where are some of these users and enterprise customers on their Docker journey?

Docker users have deployed Docker containers for a Continue reading

A Secure Supply Chain for Kubernetes

The beta release of the Docker Enterprise Edition (Docker EE) container platform last month integrates Kubernetes orchestration, running alongside Swarm, to provide a single container platform that supports both legacy and new applications running on-premises or in the cloud. For organizations that are exploring Kubernetes or deploying it in production, Docker EE offers integrated security for the entire lifecycle of a containerized application, providing an additional layer of security before the workload is deployed by Kubernetes and continuing to secure the application while it is running.

Mike Coleman previously discussed access controls for Kubernetes. This week we’ll begin discussing how Docker EE secures the Kubernetes supply chain.

What is a Software Supply Chain?

When you purchase something from a retail store, there is an entire supply chain that gets the product from raw materials to the manufacturer to you. Similarly, there is a software supply chain that takes an application from code on a developer’s laptop to production.

Every company’s software supply chain may be slightly different; some outsource software development, some have adopted Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery processes, and some deploy production applications across multiple clouds, some on-premises. Regardless of what the software supply chain consists of, Continue reading

First Look at the DockerCon San Francisco 2018 Agenda

From June 12th – 15th, San Francisco will welcome 6,000+ developers, sysadmins, architects, VP of Apps and other IT leaders to get hands-on with the latest innovations in the container ecosystem at DockerCon 2018. Today, we are excited to share a first look at the DockerCon Agenda. We’ve brought back some of your favorite from past DockerCons and are also thrilled to welcome many first time DockerCon speakers to the stage. Here is a first look at some of our favorites sessions:

Customers in Production  

Use case sessions highlight how companies are using Docker to modernize their infrastructure and build, manage and secure  distributed applications. These sessions are heavy on business value, ROI and production implementation advice, and learnings.

• Building your NoSQL ship: How an Enterprise transitioned from a RDBMS to NoSQL DB using Agile and Docker by Jonell Taylor, Metlife
• Black Friday and 100K Deployments Per Year by Srikanth Bulusu & Sanjoy Mukherjee, JCPenney
• Packaging Software for Distribution on the Edge with Docker and Windows Server
  Peter Ngai, GE Digital

Using Docker

Using Docker sessions are introductory sessions for Docker users, dev and ops alike. Filled with practical advice, learnings, and insight, these sessions will Continue reading

Video Series: Modernizing .NET Apps for Developers

 Docker Enterprise Edition (EE)  is the container platform for modernizing your existing applications, and running them in the cloud or on-premises. You can take monoliths and run them in containers with no code changes, and that gets you portability, security and efficiency.

Running in Docker is also a great starting point for modernizing the application architecture. You can breaking down the monolith into smaller, independent components which makes it easier to deploy updates, manage scale and introduce new technologies.

This new video series covers app modernization, for .NET developers and architects. It walks through the evolution of a monolithic ASP.NET 3.5 app to a distributed application running across multiple containers, using the Docker platform to plug everything together and adding features with great open-source software from the Docker ecosystem.

This is not a full re-architecture to microservices – for large .NET apps that would be a 12 month project. This series uses a feature-driven approach, taking key features out of the monolith to fix performance issues, add new functionality and support fast application updates.

Part 1 introduces the series, talks about what “modernization” means and then gets started – this is a very demo-heavy video series, where you’ll see lots Continue reading

Docker Compose and Kubernetes with Docker for Desktop

If you’re running an edge version of Docker on your desktop (Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows Desktop), you can now stand up a single-node Kubernetes cluster with the click of a button. While I’m not a developer, I think this is great news for the millions of developers who have already been using Docker on their Macbook or Windows laptop because they now have a fully compliant Kubernetes cluster at their fingertips without installing any other tools.

Developers using Docker to build containerized applications often build Docker Compose files to deploy them. With the integration of Kubernetes into the Docker product line, some developers may want to leverage their existing Compose files but deploy these applications in Kubernetes. There is, of course, Kompose, but that’s a translation layer which causes you to have two separate artifacts to manage. Is there a way to keep a native Docker-based workflow?

With Docker on the desktop (as well as Docker Enterprise Edition) you can use Docker compose to directly deploy an application onto a Kubernetes cluster.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s assume I have a simple Docker compose file like the one below that describes a three tier Continue reading

Top 3 reasons to attend DockerCon 2018

In case you missed it, DockerCon 2018 will take place at Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA on June 13-15, 2018. DockerCon is where the Docker community comes to learn, belong, and collaborate. Attendees are a mix of beginner, intermediate and advanced users who are all looking to level up their skills and go home inspired. With a 2 full days of training, more than 100 sessions, free workshops and hands-on labs, and the wealth of experience brought by each attendee, DockerCon is the place to be if you’re looking to learn Docker in 2018.

Want to go but need information to convince your manager? Here is a document to help you build a case for it including content, budget and reasons why you should attend.

Register for DockerCon 2018

Reason #1: Inspiring and informative breakout sessions

From beginner to experts, DockerCon brings together the brightest minds to talk about all things containers including Docker Platform, Kubernetes, Digital Transformation in the Enterprise, Moby and CNCF projects, Container Security, Service Mesh and more. Although the full schedule won’t be announced until the end of the month, below is a sneak peak of some of the sessions we have lined Continue reading

Docker for Windows Desktop 18.02 with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

The headline feature in Docker for Windows Desktop 18.02 is the option for an automated Kubernetes cluster, enabling native support of your favorite Kubernetes tools with Linux containers on your Windows desktop. That’s a big deal. You can try it out by using the whale icon in the system tray to set Docker for Windows Desktop into Linux containers mode, and then enabling Kubernetes support via the Settings menu. If you use current Windows 10 Insider builds please be aware of a Windows platform issue that affects Linux containers in Docker for Windows Desktop.

But that’s not all. This post covers additional progress on experimental support for Microsoft’s Linux containers on Windows (LCOW). Docker for Windows 18.02 now supports Linux and Windows containers running side-by-side via LCOW, using a single Docker daemon.

More on the evolution of LCOW:

• Docker for Windows 17.11 with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
• Exciting new things for Docker with Windows Server 1709
• Preview: Linux containers on Windows

How to get it

Docker for Windows Desktop 18.02 is an Edge channel release. If your copy of Docker for Windows Desktop is set to the Edge or Nightly channel you will receive the update Continue reading

Integrating CI/CD with Docker Enterprise Edition – Demo Webinar Recap

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) methodologies are key traits of a modern software development practice. Docker Enterprise Edition (Docker EE) can be a catalyst for this DevOps mindset, integrating with your preferred tools and existing practices to improve the quality and speed at which innovation is delivered.

In our recent webinar, Integrating CI/CD with Docker Enterprise Edition, we walked through an example where a developer is using GitLab as the CI tool of choice. If you missed the webinar, you can watch the demo here:

Here are some of the top questions from the webinar:

Q: Can you explain the process for deploying the application to production shown in the demo?

A: This example leveraged a capability called image promotions to automatically push an approved image to the “prod” repository. The policy was defined to look for images in the “dev” repository with a specific label. If that image has less than the preset number of vulnerabilities from a security scan, it is automatically moved to the “prod” repository and a new label of “latest” is attached. With the “latest” image updated, a service refresh replaces the old production website container with the new version and the 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

Role-based Access Control for Kubernetes with Docker EE

Last week we released the latest beta for Docker Enterprise Edition. Without a doubt one of the most significant features in this release is providing a single management control plane for both Swarm and Kubernetes-based clusters – including clusters made up of both Swarm and Kubernetes workers. This offers customers unparalleled choice in how they manage both their traditional and cloud native applications.

When we were looking at doing this release we knew we couldn’t just slap a GUI on top of Kubernetes and call it good. We wanted to find areas where we could simplify and secure the deployment of  applications onto Kubernetes nodes.

One such area is role-based access control (RBAC). Docker EE 17.06 introduced an enhanced RBAC solution that provided flexible and granular access controls across multiple teams and users. While Kubernetes first introduced a basic RBAC solution with the 1.6 release, in this upcoming release, we extend Docker EE’s existing RBAC support to support Kubernetes primitives.

(If you’re not familiar how RBAC works in Docker EE, please read my blog post from August 2017)

In addition to the five predefined authentication roles in Docker EE (view only, full control, none, etc) there are Continue reading

Beta for Docker Enterprise Edition with Kubernetes Integration Now Available

Today we are excited to launch the public beta for Docker Enterprise Edition (Docker EE), our container management platform. First announced at DockerCon Europe, this release features Kubernetes integration as an optional orchestration solution, running side-by-side with Docker Swarm. With this solution, organizations will be able to deploy applications with either Swarm or fully-conformant Kubernetes while maintaining the consistent developer-to-IT workflow users have come to expect from Docker, especially when combined with the recent edge release of Docker for Mac with Kubernetes support. In addition to Kubernetes, this release includes enhancements to Swarm and to Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) which can be tested during the beta period.

Due to the high interest in this beta, license keys will be rolled out in batches over the next few weeks. Individuals who signed up for beta at www.docker.com/kubernetes will receive instructions on how to access this release and where to submit feedback. We also encourage our partners to use this time to test and validate their Docker and Kubernetes solutions against this release. Registrations will remain open throughout this beta testing period.

Explore the New Features

At DockerCon Europe, we demonstrated the management integration of Kubernetes within Docker EE. You can Continue reading

DockerCon 2018: Registration, CFP and first speakers

Good news: Our favorite time of the year is less than 6 months away! After Seattle and Austin, we’re excited to bring DockerCon US 2018 back to San Francisco. With more than 6000 attendees gathering at Moscone Center on June 12-15, 2018, this year’s DockerCon US should be the biggest one to date.

In case you’ve never attended this conference before, DockerCon is the original container conference and the largest community and industry event for companies looking to define or refine their container platform strategy or cloud initiatives. If containers are important to your daily workflow or your business initiatives, you and your team (10% at registration for groups of 4 or more) should attend to learn about the latest updates from the Docker container platform, customer use cases and innovation coming from the Docker and cloud native ecosystems.

With 8 tracks, workshops, official Docker training, exec fireside chat, panels, community theaters and hands-on labs, attending DockerCon is one of the most effective ways to learn Docker no matter your level of systems expertise. We’ll have plenty of learning materials for everyone including developers, IT Professionals, Architects and Executives.

DockerCon Schedule

DockerCon CFP and speakers

Don’t forget the deadline for CFP submission is Continue reading

Cisco Now Reselling Docker Enterprise Edition

Today we are excited to announce the expansion of our partnership with the availability of Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), our container management platform on the Cisco Global Price List (GPL) and the release of the latest Cisco Validated Design (CVD):

Now customers can purchase Docker EE directly from Cisco and their joint resellers to jumpstart their new year’s resolution for a more modern application architecture, reduce IT costs and redirect saving to innovation projects.  And with our latest CVD for Cisco UCS compute infrastructure with secure container networking fabric, Contiv,  we’ve provided a roadmap on how to get started so customers and partners can gain a faster, more reliable and predictable implementation of Docker EE.

For enterprises looking to use Docker’s container management platform but not sure where to start, we can help you take the first step. The Migrating Traditional Applications (MTA) Program, designed for IT operations teams, helps enterprises modernize existing legacy .NET Windows or Java Linux applications without modifying source code or re-architecting the application in just five days with Docker and Cisco Advanced Services. The results have been incredible, with customers saving over 50% on infrastructure costs and Continue reading

Using Your Own Private Registry with Docker Enterprise Edition

One of the things that makes Docker really cool, particularly compared to using virtual machines, is how easy it is to move around Docker images. If you’ve already been using Docker, you’ve almost certainly pulled images from Docker Hub. Docker Hub is Docker’s cloud-based registry service and has tens of thousands of Docker images to choose from. If you’re developing your own software and creating your own Docker images though, you’ll want your own private Docker registry. This is particularly true if you have images with proprietary licenses, or if you have a complex continuous integration (CI) process for your build system.

Docker Enterprise Edition includes Docker Trusted Registry (DTR), a highly available registry with secure image management capabilities which was built to run either inside of your own data center or on your own cloud-based infrastructure. In the next few weeks, we’ll go over how DTR is a critical component of delivering a secure, repeatable and consistent software supply chain.  You can get started with it today through our free hosted demo or by downloading and installing the free 30-day trial. The steps to get started with your own installation are below.

Setting Up Docker Enterprise Edition

Docker Trusted Registry runs on 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

5 tips to learn Docker in 2018

As the holiday season ends, many of us are making New Year’s resolutions for 2018. Now is a great time to think about the new skills or technologies you’d like to learn. So much can change each year as technology progresses and companies are looking to innovate or modernize their legacy applications or infrastructure. At the same time the market for Docker jobs continues to grow as companies such as Visa, MetLife and Splunk adopt Docker Enterprise Edition ( EE) in production. So how about learning Docker in 2018 ? Here are a few tips to help you along the way.

1. Play With Docker: the Docker Playground and Training site

Play with Docker (PWD) is a Docker playground and training site which allows users to run Docker commands in a matter of seconds. It gives the experience of having a free Linux Virtual Machine in browser, where you can build and run Docker containers and even create clusters. Check out this video from DockerCon 2017 to learn more about this project. The training site is composed of a large set of Docker labs and quizzes from beginner to advanced level available for both Developers and IT pros at  training. Continue reading

Using Docker to Scale Operational Intelligence at Splunk

Splunk wants to make machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone. With over 14,000 customers in 110 countries, providing the best software for visualizing machine data involves hours and hours of testing against multiple supported platforms and various configurations. For Mike Dickey, Sr. Director in charge of engineering infrastructure at Splunk, the challenge was that 13 different engineering teams in California and Shanghai had contributed to test infrastructure sprawl, with hundreds of different projects and plans that were all being managed manually.

At DockerCon Europe, Mike and Harish Jayakumar, Docker Solutions Engineer, shared how Splunk leveraged Docker Enterprise Edition (Docker EE) to dramatically improve build and deployment times on their test infrastructure, converge on a unified Continuous Integration (CI) workflow, and how they’ve now grown to 600 bare-metal servers deploying tens of thousands of Docker containers per day.

You can watch the entire session here:

Hitting the Limits of Manual Test Configurations

As Splunk has grown, so has their customers’ use of their software. Many Splunk customers now process petabytes of data, and that has forced Splunk to scale their testing to match. That means more infrastructure needs to be reserved in the shared test environment Continue reading

Top 5 Blogs of 2017: Docker Platform and Moby Project add Kubernetes

As we count down the final days of 2017, we would like to bring you the final installment of the top 5 blogs of 2017. On day 5, we take a look back DockerCon EU, when we announced Kubernetes support in the Docker platform. This blog takes an in-depth look at the industry-leading container platform and the addition of Kubernetes.

The Docker platform is integrating support for Kubernetes so that Docker customers and developers have the option to use both Kubernetes and Swarm to orchestrate container workloads. Register for beta access and check out the detailed blog posts to learn how we’re bringing Kubernetes to:

• Docker Enterprise Edition
• Docker Community Edition on the desktop with Docker for Mac and Windows
• The Moby Project

Docker is a platform that sits between apps and infrastructure. By building apps on Docker, developers and IT operations get freedom and flexibility. That’s because Docker runs everywhere that enterprises deploy apps: on-prem (including on IBM mainframes, enterprise Linux and Windows) and in the cloud. Once an application is containerized, it’s easy to re-build, re-deploy and move around, or even run in hybrid setups that straddle on-prem and cloud infrastructure.

The Docker platform is composed of many Continue reading

Top 5 blogs of 2017: Spring Boot Development with Docker

We’ve rounded up the top five most popular Docker blogs of 2017. Coming in at number four is, Spring Boot Development With Docker, part of a multi-part tutorial series.

The AtSea Shop is an example storefront application that can be deployed on different operating systems and can be customized to both your enterprise development and operational environments. In my last post, I discussed the architecture of the app. In this post, I will cover how to setup your development environment to debug the Java REST backend that runs in a container.

Building the REST Application

I used the Spring Boot framework to rapidly develop the REST backend that manages products, customers and orders tables used in the AtSea Shop. The application takes advantage of Spring Boot’s built-in application server, support for REST interfaces and ability to define multiple data sources. Because it was written in Java, it is agnostic to the base operating system and runs in either Windows or Linux containers. This allows developers to build against a heterogenous architecture.

Project setup

The AtSea project uses multi-stage builds, a new Docker feature, which allows me to use multiple images to build a single Docker image that includes all the components needed for Continue reading

Top 5 blogs of 2017: LinuxKit, A Toolkit for building Secure, Lean and Portable Linux Subsystems

In case you’ve missed it, this week we’re highlighting the top five most popular Docker blogs in 2017. Coming in the third place is the announcement of LinuxKit, a toolkit for building secure, lean and portable Linux Subsystems.

LinuxKit includes the tooling to allow building custom Linux subsystems that only include exactly the components the runtime platform requires. All system services are containers that can be replaced, and everything that is not required can be removed. All components can be substituted with ones that match specific needs. It is a kit, very much in the Docker philosophy of batteries included but swappable. LinuxKit is an open source project available at https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit.

To achieve our goals of a secure, lean and portable OS,we built it from containers, for containers.  Security is a top-level objective and aligns with NIST stating, in their draft Application Container Security Guide: “Use container-specific OSes instead of general-purpose ones to reduce attack surfaces. When using a container-specific OS, attack surfaces are typically much smaller than they would be with a general-purpose OS, so there are fewer opportunities to attack and compromise a container-specific OS.”

The leanness directly helps with security by removing parts not Continue reading