An Inside Look at the Docker Captains Program

Since launching the Docker Captains over a year ago, we’ve received a lot of questions: What is a Docker Captain? What do Captains do? How do I become a Captain? So who better to answer that than the Docker Captains themselves? At DockerCon Austin, we asked the Docker Captains to share their favorite thing about wearing the Captain’s hat.

What is a Captain?

Captains are Docker experts that are leaders in their communities, organizations or ecosystems. As Docker advocates, they are committed to sharing their knowledge and do so every chance they get!

What do Captains do?

Captains are advisors, ambassadors, coders, contributors, creators, tool builders, speakers, mentors, maintainers and super users and are required to be active stewards of Docker in order to remain in the program.

In addition to sharing their knowledge with the community, Captains provide insight and feedback to Docker. They have direct access to our technical teams, and are first to hear about and try upcoming features, product releases and big announcements.

What do Captains get? 

In return for their efforts, Captains get access to the existing captains community and Docker staff. They get ongoing training, private briefings and Slack chat channels where Captains Continue reading

Why You Should Attend AnsibleFest

It’s that time again! The time when automators from all over converge at the official event for all things Ansible — AnsibleFest San Francisco! Fresh off the heels from a packed house at AnsibleFest London in June, AnsibleFest San Francisco is shaping up to be the biggest AnsibleFest ever. With about a week before showtime, now’s the best time to start planning a trip to the “City by the Bay” for a fantastic event before it sells out.

To give a better idea of what to expect (and how to convince your manager to go), I’ve provided the top five reasons to go to AnsibleFest in San Francisco:

1. Expanded agenda and a session on Key Topics and Trends with Jim Whitehurst Red Hat CEO

We’ve heard your feedback, and listened: now more breakout sessions! We have made an unprecedented increase in sessions, up from 16 to 25, from customers, partners and the community. All session have been posted to the AnsibleFest agenda so you can see the better-than-ever lineup we have created.

2. All Ansible, all the time

Of course, we realize that Red Hat Summit is the company’s flagship event (I’ve been to seven of them), but Summit Continue reading

Liveblog: VMworld 2017 Day 2 Keynote

This is a liveblog of the day 2 keynote at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, NV. Unlike yesterday, I wasn’t accosted by the local facilities team trying to get a seat at a table in the bloggers/press/analyst area, so that’s an improvement over yesterday. While I’m aware of (most, if not all, of) the announcements that will be made today, I’m still looking forward to the keynote.

Promptly at 9am, Pat Gelsinger takes the stage to kick off the day 2 keynote. He quickly recaps yesterday’s announcements and activities, and then rapidly dives into day 2. First up is a “fireside chat” with Michael Dell.

Gelsinger brings Dell onto the stage and they dive into a number of questions submitted by folks.

• Gelsinger fields the first question, which is regarding VMware support. He calls on customers to be sure to let VMware know if support, services, products, etc., don’t meet their expectations. Gelsinger refers back to Skyline, which was brushed off yesterday, as a key component of improving VMware’s support mechanisms.
• Dell leads off the discussion on a question regarding quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and other forward-looking efforts. Naturally, he positions his company (Dell Continue reading

Video Series: Modernizing .NET Apps for IT Pros

This is a new 5-part video series in Docker’s Modernize Traditional Apps (MTA) program, aimed at Microsoft IT Pros. The video series shows you how to move a .NET 3.5 app from Windows Server to a Windows Docker container and deploy it to a scalable, highly-available environment in the cloud – without any changes to the app.

Part 1 introduces the series, explaining what is meant by “traditional” apps and the problems they present. Traditional apps are built to run on a server, rather than on a modern application platform. They have common traits, like being complex to manage and difficult to deploy. A portfolio of traditional applications tends to under-utilize its infrastructure, and over-utilize the humans who manage it. Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) fixes that, giving you a consistent way to package, release and manage all your apps, without having to re-write them.

Part 2 shows how easy it is to move traditional apps to Docker EE. I start with an ASP.NET 3.5 WebForms application running on Windows Server 2003, and use Image2Docker to extract the app and package it as a Docker image. Then I run the application in a Docker Windows container on Continue reading

Liveblog: VMworld 2017 Day 1 Keynote

This is a liveblog of the day 1 keynote at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, NV. There was a bit of a kerfluffle regarding seating (the local facilities staff didn’t want to let me sit in the bloggers’ area because “you’re not a blogger”), but I managed to snag a seat anyway.

Prior to the keynote, a number of announcements were released; here’s a quick look at a few of them:

• VMware and AWS Announce Initial Availability of VMware Cloud on AWS
• VMware Integrated OpenStack 4.0 and vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) 3.5
• Availability of VMware Cloud Services (Discovery, Cost Insight, Network Insight, AppDefense, NSX Cloud, Wavefront) (this has been a big part of my work life for the last year, great to see them available)

Pat Gelsinger takes the stage at about 9:05am, after a very cool AR/VR demo. Gelsinger welcomes the crowd, and takes a minute to reflect upon his time at CEO of VMware. Gelsinger also takes a moment to talk about the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, and urges attendees to help support the recovery of that effort.

Gelsinger talks how “science fiction” is becoming “science fact”: exoskeletons, teleportation, and genetically modified organisms via CRISPR. Continue reading

Technology Short Take #86

Welcome to Technology Short Take #86, the latest collection of links, articles, and posts from around the web, focused on major data center technology areas. Enjoy!

Networking

• Csilla Bessenyei has a series of articles on step-by-step automation that you might find helpful. I found the articles at step 5, the benefits of Git for network engineers, but the previous four articles also look helpful.
• James Governor provides a useful explanation of a service mesh in the context of Istio and Linkerd; this is helpful for those of you out there who’ve heard the terms/names but haven’t had time to really dig in and understand what’s happening here.
• Speaking of service mesh: a couple related articles passed across my desk(top) recently. The first of these is an article on using Traefik with Kubernetes and Let’s Encrypt (throwing in a Consul back-end for the fun of it). The second is this post on Istio plus Linkerd, which talks about how to use Linkerd in conjunction with Istio to build a service mesh. (Do I need to talk about how understanding a service mesh is a good thing for networking professionals? That might be a good blog post topic right there! Continue reading

Moby Project and Open Source Summit North America

Docker will be at Open Source Summit from to highlight new development with the Moby Project and it’s various components: containerd, LinuxKit, InfraKit, Notary, etc.

Come see us at Booth #510 to learn more about:

• The different uses cases for the Moby Projects and components
• The difference between Docker and the Moby Project
• How to get started with each component

As part of the OSS NA, Docker is also organizing a Moby Summit on September 14, 2017. Following the success of the previous editions, we’ll keep the same format which consists of short technical talks / demos in the morning and Birds-of-a-Feather in the afternoon.

 We have an excellent line up of speakers in store for you and are excited to share the agenda below. We hope that these sessions inspire you to come participate in the Moby community and register for this Moby summit.

For those of you who can’t attend the summit we recommend the following sessions as part of the main event / tracks:

Building specialized container-based systems with Moby: a few use cases

Speaker: Patrick Chanezon

This talk will explain how you can leverage the Moby project to assemble your own Continue reading

Announcing new DockerCon Europe tracks, sessions, speakers and website!

The DockerCon Europe website has a fresh look and new sessions added. The DockerCon Review Committee is still working through announcing final sessions in each breakout track, but below is an overview of the tracks and content you’ll find this year in Copenhagen. To view abstracts in more detail check out the Agenda Page.

In case you missed it, we have two summits happening on Thursday, October 19th. The Moby Summit, a hands-on collaborative event for advanced container users who are actively maintaining, contributing or generally interested in the design and development of the Moby Project and it’s components. The Enterprise Summit, a full day event for enterprise IT practitioners who want to learn how they can embrace the journey to hybrid IT and implement a new strategy to help fund their modernization efforts.

We have an excellent line up of speakers in store for you and are excited to share the agenda below. We hope that these sessions inspire you to register to DockerCon Europe.

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 help you get started with Docker or Continue reading

Test Drive Docker Enterprise Edition at VMworld 2017

Docker will be at VMworld 2017 next week (August 27-31) in Las Vegas to highlight new developments with Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), the only Container as a Service (CaaS) platform for managing and securing Windows, Linux and mainframe applications across any infrastructure, both on premises and in the cloud.

Stop by Booth #1206 to learn more about:

• How VMs and containers work together for improved application lifecycle management
• How containers and Docker EE can help IT with day-to-day maintenance and operations tasks
• How IT can lead modernization efforts with Docker EE and become drivers of innovation in their organizations

Just as VMware vSphere simplified the management of VMs and made virtualization the de facto standard inside the data center, Docker is driving containerization of your entire application portfolio with Docker EE and helping organizations like yours to achieve their cloud and app modernization goals without requiring you to change how you operate.

Test Drive Docker EE in the Booth

Don’t miss the chance to get hands-on experience with Docker with our in-booth labs. Led by Docker experts, you will get to see for yourself how Docker brings all applications—traditional and cloud-native, Windows and Linux, on-prem and in Continue reading

My Three Favorite New Features in Docker Enterprise Edition

I’ve been at Docker for just over two years now, and I’ve worked with every version of Docker Enterprise Edition (née Docker Datacenter) since before there even was a Docker Enterprise Edition (EE). I’m more excited about this new release than any previous release.

There are several new features that are going to ease the management of your applications (both traditional and cloud-native) wherever you need them to run: the cloud or the data center, virtual or physical, Linux or Windows – and now even IBM Z mainframes.

It would take too long to discuss all of the new features, so with that in mind, I’m going to talk about my three favorite features in Docker EE 17.06.

Hybrid-OS Clusters

Docker and Microsoft introduced support for Windows Server containers last fall. This was a major milestone that helped Docker move towards the goal of embracing apps across the entirety of the data center. With this latest release Docker extends hybrid OS operations even further: IT admins can now build and manage clusters comprised of Linux, Windows Server 2016, and IBM Z mainframes  – all from the same management plane. This means you can manage applications comprised of both Windows Continue reading

Docker is Headed to Gartner Catalyst 2017

The Docker team will be in sunny San Diego, CA, August 21-23 for Gartner Catalyst. Come by and visit us in Booth #508 to meet with our Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) experts, see a demo of Docker EE, and ask us any questions you may have before and after any of the Gartner sessions on Docker and containers. Better yet, schedule a meeting with us and we’ll not only answer all your questions, you will also get a special gift.

This year’s Catalyst event includes an entire topic dedicated to Docker and containers, which you can find by looking for the topic “Docker & Containers” in the schedule builder. If you are still trying to separate all the fact from fiction about Docker and want a specific recommendation, there is a great Tech Demo session by Gartner analyst Richard Watson we think you might like titled Seven Docker & Container Myths We Need To Bust. 

We hope you will join us at Gartner Catalyst to get the latest research on the next big trends for IT, but if you are not in San Diego, we hope to see you at one of these other upcoming events:

• VMworld, Continue reading

Announcing the New Release of Docker Enterprise Edition

We are excited to share the new release of Docker Enterprise Edition. By supporting IBM Z and Windows Server 2016, this release puts us further in the lead with the first Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution in the market for the modernization of all applications without disruption to you and your IT environment.

Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) 17.06 embraces Windows, Linux and Linux-based mainframe applications, bringing the key benefits of CaaS to the enterprise application portfolio. Most enterprises manage a diverse set of applications that includes both traditional applications and microservices, built on Linux and Windows, and intended for x86 servers, mainframes, and public clouds. Docker EE unites all of these applications into single platform, complete with customizable and flexible access control, support for a broad range of applications and infrastructure, and a highly automated software supply chain. These capabilities allow organizations to easily layer Docker EE onto existing processes and workflows, aligning to existing organizational structures while delivering improved resource utilization and reduced maintenance time.

This release includes UCP 2.2 and DTR 2.3 and establishes Docker EE as a key IT platform for both new application development as well as application modernization across both on-premises and Continue reading

Quick Reference to Common AWS CLI Commands

This post provides an extremely basic “quick reference” to some commonly-used AWS CLI commands. It’s not intended to be a deep dive, nor is it intended to serve as any sort of comprehensive reference (the AWS CLI docs nicely fill that need).

This post does make a couple of important assumptions:

1. This post assumes you already have a basic understanding of the key AWS concepts and terminology, and therefore doesn’t provide any definitions or explanations of these concepts.

2. This post assumes the AWS CLI is configured to output in JSON. (If you’re not familiar with JSON, see this introductory article.) If you’ve configured your AWS CLI installation to output in plain text, then you’ll need to adjust these commands accordingly.

I’ll update this post over time to add more “commonly-used” commands, since each reader’s definition of “commonly used” may be different based on the AWS services consumed.

To list SSH keypairs in your default region:

aws ec2 describe-key-pairs

To use jq to grab the name of the first SSH keypair returned:

aws ec2 describe-key-pairs | jq -r '.KeyPairs[0].KeyName'

To store the name of the first SSH keypair returned in a variable for use in later commands:

KEY_NAME=$(aws  Continue reading

Using ODrive for Cloud Storage on Linux

A few months ago, I stumbled across a service called ODrive (“Oh” Drive) that allows you to combine multiple cloud storage services together. Since that time, I’ve been experimenting with ODrive, testing it to see how well it works, if at all, with my Fedora Linux environment. In spite of very limited documentation, I think I’ve finally come to a point where I can share what I’ve learned.

Before I proceed any further, I do feel it is necessary to provide a couple of disclaimers. First, while I’m using ODrive myself, I’m not using their paid (premium) service, even though it offers quite a bit more functionality. Why? Maybe this is a “chicken-and-egg” scenario, but I have a really hard time paying for a premium service where Linux client functionality is very limited and the documentation is extraordinarily sparse. (ODrive, if you’re reading this: put some effort into your Linux support and your docs, and you’ll probably get more paying customers.) Second, I’m providing this information “as is”; use it at your own risk.

OK, with those disclaimers out of the way, let’s get into the content. For Linux users, this page is about the extent of ODrive’s documentation. Continue reading

Manually Installing Azure CLI on Fedora 25

For various reasons that we don’t need to get into just yet, I’ve started exploring Microsoft Azure. Given that I’m a command-line interface (CLI) fan, and given that I use Fedora as my primary laptop operating system, this led me to installing the Azure CLI on my Fedora 25 system—and that, in turn, led to this blog post.

Some Background

First, some background. Microsoft has instructions for installing Azure CLI on Linux, but there are two problems with these instructions:

1. Official packages that can be installed via a package manager are only provided for Ubuntu/Debian. Clearly, this leaves Fedora/CentOS/RHEL users out in the cold.

2. Users of other Linux distributions are advised to use curl to download a script and pipe that script directly into Bash. (“Danger, Will Robinson!”) Clearly, this is not a security best practice, although I am glad that they didn’t recommend the use of sudo in the mix.

Now, if you dig into #2 a bit, you’ll find that the InstallAzureCli script you’re advised to download via curl really does nothing more than download a Python script named install.py. The install.py Python script really just uses pip and virtualenv to install the Azure Continue reading

Five Questions: Testing Ansible Playbooks & Roles

Next up in our #AskAnsible posts is Chris Meyers, our Senior Software Engineer.

Learn his take on five key questions we often get regarding testing Ansible Playbooks and roles.

1. Why should I test my Playbooks and roles?

Chris: Ansible Playbooks and roles should be treated like production code. Production code usually has unit tests, functional tests, and integration tests.

• Unit testing Ansible is equivalent to unit testing SQL queries, you just normally don’t do it. Ansible unit testing belongs at the Python module level.
• Function testing with Ansible would require a large amount of system state setup or mocking, and it just isn't realistic. 
• Integration testing is the most useful. It ensures that your intent, expressed in English, is translated correctly to Ansible’s declarative language.
  • Ex: you want to set up a LAMP or MEAN stack. A simple integration test would be to issue an http request that you know exercises the database. The integration test would ensure that your setup is correct from end to end.

Chris: You can start at any time! Tests can be added for new Playbooks or to existing Playbooks. Testing Continue reading

Technology Short Take #85

Welcome to Technology Short Take #85! This is my irregularly-published collection of links and articles from around the Internet related to the major data center technologies: networking, hardware, security, cloud computing, applications/OSes, storage, and virtualization. Plus, just for fun, I usually try to include a couple career-related links as well. Enjoy!

Networking

• Want to install VMware NSX in your home lab, but concerned about resource utilization? Here’s a guide to deploying NSX in home labs with limited resources. (Although it’s not called out in the article, it’s important to note that this is not supported by VMware.)
• Jeffrey Kusters has a write-up on how to integrate AWS and vRealize Network Insight 3.4. This allows you to visualize network activity on AWS using vRNI (as on-premises traffic, assuming you’ve configured vRNI appropriately).
• Gareth Lewis walks through a vCNS 5.5.4 to VMware NSX 6.2.5 upgrade.
• It’s a bit Ansible-skewed (as expected given it’s posted on the Ansible site), but networking pros looking for some perspectives on using Ansible for network automation might find this post useful.
• PowerNSX in a container? Sure!
• I know that I saw this article from Matt Oswalt before, but for some reason Continue reading

DockerCon Europe Diversity Scholarship!

Each year, DockerCon brings the community together to learn, belong and contribute. With the support of Docker and our DockerCon Europe Scholarship sponsor, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) our team has created the DockerCon Europe Scholarship Program to provide members of the Docker community, who are traditionally underrepresented, mentorship and a financial scholarship to attend DockerCon in Copenhagen this year. This scholarship program aims to foster inclusivity by supporting members of our community through access to resources, tools and mentorship needed to facilitate career and educational development.

If you are interested in applying for the DockerCon Scholarship, follow the steps below:

Application Process:

The application process includes completing one of the five self-paced trainings along with the scholarship application form.

Step 1

Complete at least one of the free self-paced courses available in the Docker Playground. These courses are intended for both Dev and Ops beginner and intermediate level Docker users. Select which course you feel best fits you.

Step 2

After you’ve finished one of the courses, complete the application here. In the application, you will need to provide the name(s) of the lab(s) you completed along with the answers to the quiz at the end of Continue reading

Information on the Recent Site Migration

Earlier this week, I completed the migration of this site to an entirely new platform, marking the third or fourth platform migration for this site in its 12-year history. Prior to the migration, the site was generated using Jekyll and GitHub Pages following a previous migration in late 2014. Prior to that, I ran WordPress for about 9 years. So what is it running now?

The site is now generated using Hugo, an extraordinarily fast static site generator. I switched to Hugo because it offers a couple of key benefits over Jekyll:

1. Site build times are 10x faster (less than 30 seconds with Hugo compared to over 5 minutes with Jekll)—this directly translates into me being able to test changes to the site much more quickly
2. Hugo is a single binary that’s easily installed on Linux or macOS (and Windows too, though I don’t have any Windows systems)

Hugo also gives me more flexibility that I had with Jekyll, such as generating lists of articles by tag or lists of articles by category. Along with those additions—the ability to browse by tag or category—I’ve also removed the pagination (I mean, who’s really going to page through 188 pages of Continue reading

Be a Budget Hero with Docker Enterprise Edition

We recently started a multi-part learning series for SysAdmins and IT professionals called IT Starts With Docker. We started with the basics, covering container technology and Docker solutions for the enterprise. Now, we shift to the important question: Is it worth your time and your company’s investment to further explore Docker Enterprise Edition (EE)?

The resounding answer to that question is YES. IT teams who have adopted Docker EE are finding it faster and easier to deploy and maintain their applications, plus drive better infrastructure utilization, all without touching the underlying code. Developer teams are realizing productivity gains of their own by being able to onboard new developers faster, shortening the cycles from development to production, and elimination of the burdensome “it worked on my machine” problems.

Try the simple ROI calculator for yourself. It takes just a couple of minutes and allows you to estimate your own savings with Docker EE and how you can become the budget hero of your department. Then, register for our live webinar on Tuesday, August 15th, The Business Value of Docker, where we will outline how organizations like your own are saving 50% on their total costs with Docker EE. Continue reading