Tips for Troubleshooting Apps in Production with Docker Datacenter
If you have been using Docker for some time, after the initial phases of building Dockerfiles and running a container here and there, the real work begins in building, deploying and operating multi-container applications in a production environment. Are you operationally ready to take your application to production? Docker Datacenter provides an integrated management framework for your Dockerized environment and applications and when coupled with clear strategies in approaching and resolving anomalies, IT ops teams can be assured in successfully operationalizing Docker.
Let’s use a sports metaphor to approach troubleshooting:
- Pre-Game will cover the planning phase for your applications
- Game Time will cover troubleshooting tools available in Docker Datacenter
- Post-Game will discuss complementary tools to aid in ongoing insights
Pre-Game
Whether or not you are sports fan, you can appreciate the importance of the planning out any task. This is no different than what you would do for your applications. Health checks are a great way to provide a deeper level of insight into how your application is performing. Since Docker 1.12 there is a new HEALTHCHECK directive. We can use this directive to signal to the Docker Engine whether or not the application is healthy.
There are a two ways to implement the HEALTHCHECK Continue reading
Learn Docker with More Hands-On Labs
Docker Labs is a rich resource for technical folks from any background to learn Docker. Since the last update on the Docker Blog, three new labs have been published covering Ruby, SQL Server and running a Registry on Windows. The self-paced, hands-on labs are a popular way for people to learn how to use Docker for specific scenarios, and it’s a resource which is growing with the help of the community.
New Labs
- Ruby FAQ. You can Dockerize Ruby and Ruby on Rails apps, but there are considerations around versioning, dependency management and the server runtimes. The Ruby FAQ walks through some of the challenges in moving Ruby apps to Docker and proposes solutions. This lab is just beginning, we would love to have your contributions.
- SQL Server Lab. Microsoft maintain a SQL Server Express image on Docker Hub that runs in a Windows container. That image lets you attach an existing database to the container, but this lab walks you through a full development and deployment process, building a Docker image that packages your own database schema into an image.
- Registry Windows Lab. Docker Registry is an open-source registry server for storing Docker images, which you can run Continue reading
Get all the Docker talks from Tech Field Day 12
As 2016 comes to a close, we are excited to have participated in a few of the Tech Field Day and inaugural Cloud Field Day events to share the Docker technology with the IT leaders and evangelists that Stephen Foskett and Tom Hollingsworth have cultivated into this fantastic group. The final event was Tech Field Day 12 hosting in Silicon Valley.
In case you missed the live stream, check out videos of the sessions here.
Session 1: Introduction to Docker and Docker Datacenter
Session 2: Securing the Software Supply Chain with Docker
Session 3: Docker for Windows Server and Windows Containers
Session 4: Docker for AWS and Azure
Session 5: Docker Networking Fabric
These are great overviews of the Docker technology applied to enterprise app pipelines, operations, and diverse operating systems and cloud environments. And most importantly, this was a great opportunity to meet some new people and get them excited about what we are excited about.
+1!!! #TFD12 #Docker https://t.co/Zdsuw1emlo
— Alex Galbraith (@alexgalbraith) November 17, 2016
Visit the Tech Field Day site to watch more videos from previous events, read articles written by delegates or view the conversation online.
New #Docker videos from #TFD12 @TechFieldDay w/ @SFoskett @GestaltIT Continue reading
Docker acquires Infinit: a new data layer for distributed applications
The short version: Docker acquired a fantastic company called Infinit. Using their technology, we will provide secure distributed storage out of the box, making it much easier to deploy stateful services and legacy enterprise applications on Docker. This will be delivered in a very open and modular design, so operators can easily integrate their existing storage systems, tune advanced settings, or simply disable the feature altogether. Oh, and we’re going to open-source the whole thing.
The slightly longer version:
At Docker we believe that tools should adapt to the people using them, not the other way around. So we spend a lot of time searching for the most exciting and powerful software technology out there, then integrating it into simple and powerful tools. That is how we discovered a small team of distributed systems engineers based out of Paris, who were working on a next-generation distributed filesystem called Infinit. From the very first demo two things were immediately clear. First, Infinit is an incredible piece of technology with the potential to change how applications consume and produce data; Second, the Infinit and Docker teams were almost comically similar: same obsession with decentralized systems; same empathy for the needs of both Continue reading
Global Mentor Week: Thank you Docker Community!
Danke, рақмет сізге, tak, धन्यवाद, cảm ơn bạn, شكرا, mulțumesc, Gracias, merci, asante, ευχαριστώ, thank you Docker community for an incredible Docker Global Mentor Week! From Tokyo to Sao Paulo, Kisimu to Copenhagen and Ottowa to Manila, it was so awesome to see the energy from the community coming together to celebrate and learn about Docker!
Over 7,500 people registered to attend one of the 110 mentor week events across 5 continents! A huge thank you to all the Docker meetup organizers who worked hard to make these special events happen and offer Docker beginners and intermediate users an opportunity to participate in Docker courses.
None of this would have been possible without the support (and expertise!) of the 500+ advanced Docker users who signed up as mentors to help newcomers #LearnDocker.
Whether it was mentors helping attendees, newcomers pushing their first image to Docker Hub or attendees mingling and having a good time, everyone came together to make mentor week a success as you can see on social media and the Facebook photo album.
Here are some of our favorite tweets from the meetups:
@Docker #LearnDocker #DevOps #Containers #DockerDatacenter #WomenInTech #dockermeetup at #HPE Grenoble France 17Nov2016 @HPE_FR Continue reading
Your Docker Agenda for December 2016
Thank you Docker community for your amazing Global Mentor Week Events last month! In November, the community organized over 110 Docker Global Mentor Week events and more than 8,000 people enrolled in at least one of the courses for 1000+ course completions and counting! The five self-paced courses are now available for everyone free online. Check them out here!
As you gear up for the holidays, make sure to check out all the great events that are scheduled this month in Docker communities all over the world! From webinars to workshops, meetups to conference talks, check out our list of events that are coming up in December.
Official Docker Training Courses
View the full schedule of instructor led training courses here!
Introduction to Docker:
This is a two-day, on-site or classroom-based training course which introduces you to the Docker platform and takes you through installing, integrating, and running it in your working environment.
Dec 7-8: Introduction to Docker with AKRA Hamburg City, Germany
Docker Administration and Operations:
The Docker Administration and Operations course consists of both the Introduction to Docker course, followed by the Advanced Docker Topics course, held over four consecutive days.
Docker for AWS Public Beta
Today, we’re announcing that Docker for AWS is graduating to public beta, just in time for AWS re:Invent. Docker for AWS is a great way for ops to setup and maintain secure and scalable Docker deployments on AWS. With Docker for AWS, IT ops teams can:
- Deploy a standard Docker platform to ensure teams can seamlessly move apps from developer laptops to Dockerized staging and production environments, without risk of incompatibilities or lock-in.
- Integrate deeply with underlying infrastructure to ensure Docker takes advantage of the host environment’s native capabilities and exposes a familiar interface to administrators.
- Deploy the platform to all the places where you want to run Dockerized apps, simply and efficiently
- Make sure the latest and greatest Docker versions are available for the hardware, OSs, and infrastructure you love, and provide solid upgrade paths from one Docker version to the next.
To try the latest Docker for AWS beta based on the latest Docker Engine betas, click the button below:
Docker for AWS works fully within AWS free tier, giving you the ability to try it out at no cost (just create a 1-manager, 1-worker swarm). Installation takes a few minutes, and will give you a fully functioning swarm, Continue reading
What To Expect from Docker at AWS re:Invent 2016
It’s the age of IT transformation. Spurred on by developers, adoption of Docker containers has empowered application teams to transform the way they build, ship and run applications, allowing for faster and more frequent delivery. Initially seen as a tool mainly for developers, Docker is now at the center of key enterprise initiatives, and has attracted the attention of IT operations teams. Enterprise IT ops teams use Docker to maintain control over their environment and boost security as they embrace cloud strategies like hybrid cloud and multi-cloud.
Docker at AWS re:Invent 2016
This adoption of Docker within the cloud is why we are excited to be at AWS re:Invent 2016. If you’re going to be at the show, we hope you stop by booth #622. Docker employees will be showing live demos, and will be on hand to answer questions. We’ll of course be passing out free Docker swag as well.
This year we’ll be showing two types of demos at the booth:
1. Docker Datacenter (DDC) demo – In this demo attendees will learn about Docker Datacenter, our commercial solution that delivers an enterprise container management platform. The platform is supported by Docker Continue reading
Your Agenda for HPE Discover London 2016
Next week HPE will host more than 10,000 top IT executives, architects, engineers, partners and thought-leaders from across Europe at Discover 2016 London, November 29th – December 1st in London.
Come visit Docker in Booth #208 to learn how Docker’s Containers-as-a-Service platform is transforming modern application infrastructures, allowing business to benefit from a more agile development environment.
Docker experts will be on-hand to for in-booth demos, hands-on-labs, breakout sessions and Transformation Zone sessions to demonstrate how Docker’s infrastructure platform, provides businesses with a unifying framework to embrace hybrid infrastructures and optimize resource utilization across legacy and modern Linux and Windows applications.
Not attending Discover London? Don’t miss a thing and “Save the Date” for the live streaming of keynotes and top sessions beginning November 29th at 11:00 GMT and through the duration of the event.
Be sure to add these key Docker sessions to your HPE Discover London agenda:
Ongoing: Transformation Zone Hours Show Floor
DEMO315: HPE IT Docker success stories
Supercharge your container deployments on bare metal and VMs by orchestrating large workloads using simple Docker mechanisms. See how the HPE team automated Continue reading
Introducing the Docker Community Directory and Docker Community Slack
Today, we’re thrilled to officially introduce the Docker Community Directory and Slack to further enable community building and collaboration. Our goal is to give everyone the opportunity to become a more informed and engaged member of the community by creating sub groups and channels based on location, language, use cases, interest in specific Docker-centric projects or initiatives.
Sign up for the Docker Community Directory and Slack
Docker Community Directory
Members who join the Docker Community Directory will benefit from the following:
- Latest product updates and release notes
- Targeted invitations and promo codes for Docker community events (DockerCon, Docker Summits, Meetups, Docker Partner events, trainings, workshops and hackathons)
- Ability to participate in raffles for Docker Swag
- Chance to get priority access to product betas
- Opportunity to get involved as a user and/or customer reference, meetup organizer, mentor, speaker, etc.
- Be listed on the Docker Community Directory without sharing your email (built in direct messaging system)
- Access to the Docker Community Slack
The Docker Community Directory is a tool for community members to collaborate. Everyone should use it respectfully, with genuine and specific Docker-centric messages. It should not be used to send messages that could be qualified as spam or otherwise violate Continue reading
What’s New in Docker Datacenter with Engine 1.12 – Demo Q&A
Last week we announced the latest release of Docker Datacenter (DDC) with Engine 1.12 integration, which includes Universal Control Plane (UCP) 2.0 and Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) 2.1. Now, IT operations teams can manage and secure their environment more effectively and developers can self-service select from an even more secure image base. Docker Datacenter with Engine 1.12 boasts improvements in orchestration and operations, end to end security (image signing, policy enforcement, mutual TLS encryption for clusters), enables Docker service deployments and includes an enhanced UI. Customers also have backwards compatibility for Swarm 1.x and Compose.
To showcase some of these new features we hosted a webinar where we provided an overview of Docker Datacenter, talked through some of the new features and showed a live demo of solution. Watch the recording of the webinar below:
We hosted a Q&A session at the end of the webinar and have included some of the most common audience questions received.
Audience Q&A
Can I still deploy run and deploy my applications built with a previous Docker Engine version?
Yes. UCP 2.0 automatically sets up and manages a Swarm cluster alongside the native built-in swarm-mode Continue reading
Three Considerations for Planning your Docker Datacenter Deployment
Congratulations! You’ve decided to make the change your application environment with Docker Datacenter. You’re now on your way to greater agility, portability and control within your environment. But what do you need to get started? In this blog, we will cover things you need to consider (strategy, infrastructure, migration) to ensure a smooth POC and migration to production.
1. Strategy
Strategy involves doing a little work up-front to get everyone on the same page. This stage is critical to align expectations and set clear success criteria for exiting the project. The key focus areas are to determining your objective, plan out how to achieve it and know who should be involved.
Set the objective – This is a critical step as it helps to set clear expectations, define a use case and outline the success criteria for exiting a POC. A common objective is to enable developer productivity by implementing a Continuous Integration environment with Docker Datacenter.
Plan how to achieve it – With a clear use case and outcome identified, the next step is to look at what is required to complete this project. For a CI pipeline, Docker is able to standardize the development environment, provide isolation of the applications and their dependencies Continue reading
Get to Know the Docker Datacenter Networking Updates
The latest release of Docker Datacenter (DDC) on Docker Engine 1.12 brings many new networking features that were designed with service discovery and high availability in mind. As organizations continue their journey towards modernizing legacy apps and microservices architectures, these new features were created to address modern day infrastructure demands. DDC builds on and extends the built-in orchestration capabilities including declarative services, scheduling, networking and security features of Engine 1.12. In addition to these new features, we published a new Reference Architecture to help guide you in designing and implementing this for your unique application requirements.
Among the new features in DDC are:
- DNS for service discovery
- Automatic internal service load balancing
- Cluster-wide transport-layer (L4) load balancing
- Cluster-wide application-layer (L7) load balancing using the new HTTP Routing Mesh (HRM) experimental feature
When creating a microservice architecture where services are often decoupled and communicated using APIs, there is an intrinsic need for many of these services to know how to communicate with each other. If a new service is created, how will it know where to find the other services it needs to communicate with? As a service needs to be scaled, what mechanism can be used for Continue reading
DockerCon Returns to Europe in 2017
DockerCon is making its return to Europe next year! DockerCon Europe will be held in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, Denmark at Bella Center Cope
nhagen from October 16 – October 18, 2017. We plan on opening the week on Monday, October 16 with paid trainings and workshops, then General Session will kick off the conference the morning of Tuesday October 17 and the conference will continue through Wednesday October 18.
Three reasons why we are excited about DockerCon Europe in Copenhagen
- On behalf of the entire Docker team, it’s safe to say that we cannot wait to reunite with the Docker Community in Europe under one roof again! Local Docker Meetup chapters take place every week to fuel the community enthusiasm, but there is something special about coming together for DockerCon and collaborating, learning and networking as a big group.
- Recently remodeled in 2014/2015, the Bella Center Copenhagen is an ultra-modern event space featuring Scandinavian design throughout including open space with lots of indoor greenery. Bella Center Copenhagen is also one of the most sustainable venues in the world. They practice waste sorting in 16 categories, have an 850 kW wind turbine on-site for energy, as well as Continue reading
Exciting news from CheConf
Eclipse Che is a developer workspace server and cloud IDE. With Che, you can define a workspace with the project code files and all of their dependencies necessary to edit, build, run, and debug them. You can share your workspaces with other team members. And Che drives Codenvy, cloud workspaces for development teams, with access control and other features.
Today in the keynote at CheConf 2016, Tyler Jewell made several Docker related announcements.
- Che runs on your machine as a Docker container, and generates other containers for workspaces making it a fully Dockerized IDE.
- Docker now powers the Che CLI, including most Che utilities like IP lookup, curl, compiling Che, versioning, launching.
- Che has added support for Docker Compose files in workspaces, making it really easy to write and debug Compose-based applications, right in Che.
- Che agents, such as SSH or language servers for intellisense, are deployed as containers.
- Chedir is a command line utility for converting source repos into Dockerized workspaces.
- Che is now available in the Docker Store.
- Codenvy is packaged as a set of Docker containers. With docker-compose up you start up ten docker containers that run Codenvy on your network.
- Codenvy Continue reading
Introducing Image Signing Policy in Docker Datacenter
My colleague colleague Ying Li and I recently blogged about Securing the Software Supply Chain and drew the analogy between traditional physical supply chains and the creation, building, and deployment involved in a software supply chain. We believe that a software pipeline that can be verified at every stage is an important step in raising the security bar for all software, and we didn’t stop at simply presenting the idea.
Integrated Content Trust and Image Signing Policy
In the recent release of Docker Datacenter, we announced a new feature that starts to brings these security capabilities together along the software supply chain. Built on Notary, a signing infrastructure based on The Update Framework (TUF), along with Docker Content Trust (DCT), an integration of the Notary toolchain into the Docker client, DDC now allows administrators to set up signing policies that prevent untrusted content from being deployed.
In this release of DDC, the Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) now also ships with integrated Notary services. This means you’re ready to start using DCT and the new Signing Policy features out of the box! No separate server and database to install, configure and connect to the registry.
Bringing it all together
Image Continue reading
Docker Datacenter adds enterprise orchestration, security policy and refreshed UI
Today we are excited to introduce new additions to Docker Datacenter, our Container as a Service (CaaS) platform for enterprise IT and application teams. Docker Datacenter provides an integrated platform for developers and IT operations teams to collaborate securely on the application lifecycle. Built on the foundation of Docker Engine, Docker Datacenter (DDC) also provides integrated orchestration, management and security around managing resources like access, images, applications, networks and more across the cluster.
This latest release of Docker Datacenter includes a number of new features and improvements focused in the following areas:
- Enterprise orchestration and operations to make running and operating multi container applications simple, secure and scalable
- Integrated end to end security to cover all of the components and people that interact with the application pipeline
- User experience and performance improvements ensure that even the most complex operations are handled efficiently
Let’s dig into some of the new features.
Enterprise orchestration with backward compatibility
This release of Docker Datacenter not only integrates the built in orchestration capabilities of Docker Engine 1.12 utilizing swarm mode and services, but also provides backwards compatibility for standalone containers using the docker run commands. To help enterprise application teams migrate, it is important Continue reading
Docker Online Meetup #46: Introduction to InfraKit
In case you missed it, Solomon Hykes (Docker Founder and CTO) open sourced InfraKit during his keynote address at LinuxCon Europe in Berlin last month. InfraKit is a declarative management toolkit for orchestrating infrastructure built by two Docker core team engineers, David Chung and Bill Farner. Read this blog post to learn more about InfraKit origins, internals and plugins including groups, instances and flavors.
There are many ways you can participate in the development of the project and influence the roadmap:
- Star the project on GitHub to follow issues and development
- Help define and implement new and interesting plugins
- Instance plugins to support different infrastructure providers
- Flavor plugins to support a variety of systems like etcd or mysql clusters
- Group controller plugins like metrics-driven auto scaling and more
- Help define interfaces and implement new infrastructure resource types for things like load balancers, networks and storage volume provisioners
Check out the InfraKit repository README for more info, a quick tutorial and to start experimenting — from plain files to Terraform integration to building a Zookeeper Continue reading
Docker at Tech Field Day 12
Docker will be presenting at Tech Field Day 12, and you can sit in on the sessions – at least virtually.
Tech Field Day is an opportunity for IT practitioners to hear from some of the leading technology companies, and Docker is excited to be participating again. Many thanks to Stephen Foskett and Tom Hollingsworth for cultivating a vibrant community of technical leaders and evangelists and inviting us to participate. Looking forward to meeting more of the delegates.
Our session will be Wednesday, November 16th, from 4:30 to 6:30pm Pacific. We have a full slate of topics including:
- Docker Datacenter: What is Docker Datacenter and how can it help organizations implement their own Container as a Service platform.
- Docker for Windows Server: An overview of the integration of Docker containers and Windows Server 2016.
- Docker for AWS and Docker for Azure: Learn about the easiest way to deploy and manage clusters of Docker hosts on both Azure and AWS.
- Docker Security: We’ll discuss how to implement a secure software supply chain with Docker.
- Docker Networking: A conversation on how Docker allows developers to define container centric networks that run on top of your existing infrastructure.
New Dockercast episode and interview with Docker Captain Laura Frank
We recently had the opportunity to catch up with the amazing Laura Frank. Laura is a developer focused on making tools for other developers.As an engineer at Codeship, she works on improving the Docker infrastructure and overall experience for users on Codeship. Previously, she worked on several open source projects to support Docker in the early stages of the project, including Panamax and ImageLayers. She currently lives in Berlin.
Laura is also a Docker Captain, a distinction that Docker awards select members of the community that are experts in their field and passionate about sharing their Docker knowledge with others.
As we do with all of these podcasts, we begin with a little bit of history of “How did you get here?” Then we dive into the Codeship offering and how it optimizes its delivery flow by using Docker containers for everything. We then end up with a “What’s the coolest Docker story you have?” I hope you enjoy – please feel free to comment and leave suggestions.
In addition to the questions covered in the podcast, we’ve had the chance to ask Laura for a couple additional questions below.
How has Docker impacted what you Continue reading