Container Deployment Demos from Interop ITX
At Interop ITX 2017 in Las Vegas, I had the privilege to lead a half-day workshop on options for deploying containers to cloud providers. As part of that workshop, I gave four live demos of using different deployment options. Those demos—along with the slides I used for my presentation along the way—are now available to anyone who might like to try them on their own.
The slides and all the resources for the demos are available in this GitHub repository. The four demos are:
Docker Swarm on EC2: This demo leverages Terraform and Ansible to stand up and configure a Docker Swarm cluster on AWS.
Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS): This demo uses AWS CloudFormation to create an EC2 Container Service cluster with 3 instances and an Amazon RDS instance for backend database storage.
Kubernetes on AWS using
kops: Using thekopsCLI tool, this demo turns up a Kubernetes cluster on AWS to show how to deploy containerized applications on Kubernetes.Google Container Engine: The final demo shows using Google Container Engine—which is Kubernetes—to deploy an application.
In the coming weeks, I plan to recreate the demos, record them, and publish them via YouTube, so that Continue reading
Spring Boot Development with Docker
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 the application. The multi-stage build uses a Maven container to build the the application jar file. The jar file is then copied to a Java Development Kit image. This Continue reading
Docker Federal Summit Recap and videos
On May 2nd, Docker returned to the Newseum to host the second annual Docker Federal Summit. This one day event is designed to bring government agency developers, IT ops, program leaders and the ecosystem together to share and learn about the trends driving change in IT from containers, cloud and devops. We expanded the agenda this year two tracks, with presentations from Docker, ecosystem partners, agency and community leaders to drive discussions, technology deep dives and hands on tutorials.
View the general session replay here:
General session table of content and slides
- 13:05 Iain Gray, SVP Customer Success discusses how Docker delivers a unique secure supply chain for all applications and infrastructure
- 33:35 Nathan McCauley, Director Security Engineering discusses the principles of least privilege design on which Docker is built
- 55:30 Modernize Traditional Apps to gain portability, security and efficiency without changing source code
- 59:13 Banjot Chanana, Senior Director Products delivers an overview and demo of Docker Enterprise Edition
In addition, the following breakout sessions dove deeper into pragmatic advice, security, development, cloud and compliance.
- Lessons Learned from Deploying Containers in Production featuring a panel discussion with Booz Allen Hamilton, JIDO, GSA and USCIS
- Scaling and Securing Applications on Your Continue reading
Ansible + Windows Webinar Q&A
The Ansible Ask an Expert webinar series continues to be one of the most popular series we’ve ever hosted. During these Q&A style webinars, our Ansible experts take questions from the audience about specific topics.
In April, we covered Ask an Expert: Windows. We’ve compiled the questions and answers below for your reference.
Interested in more? Our next Ask an Expert: Windows webinar is scheduled for August 10th at 2PM EDT. Register here.
Q: Any update on support for Windows machine as the control machine? This would make a lot of sense for Windows-only administrators who don't use Linux all the time.
A: There are several technical limitations that prevent the Ansible controller from running as a native Win32 application. However, Ansible does work under the new Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10. While we don't officially support it for production workloads (nor does Microsoft), it does work quite well for developing and testing Ansible content.
Q: Is it possible to manage MySQL under Windows with Ansible?
A: Yes, the MySQL modules can manage Windows-hosted MySQL the same way as Linux-hosted MySQL. The modules themselves still need to actually run on a Linux/Mac host, but they're usually run from Continue reading
Developing a Spring Boot app on Docker: The AtSea Demo App
This is the first of a series of blog posts that demonstrates using Docker to develop a typical web application and deploying it in production. For DockerCon 2017, we wanted to build a new demo application that would demonstrate the flexibility of using Docker in development as well as showcase the features of Docker in a production environment. The result was the AtSea Shop, a storefront application that can be deployed on different operating systems and can be customized to both your enterprise development and operational environment.
A Hybrid Architecture
The team decided on a few ground rules. First, we wanted to use modern components commonly used in enterprise applications. We decided to build a Java application using the Spring Boot framework. The web client is a javascript application written using React as a framework. Second, the application should be able to use any relational database and that it could be deployed on a Linux or Windows environment or cluster. Finally, the team wanted to show the process from development to deployment including building the application, implementing security, and deploying the application.
The application combines a typical Java n-tier architecture that uses Spring Boot’s web MVC framework for the REST API Continue reading
Docker at Microsoft Build 2017
Build is Microsoft’s premier developer event, run annually. This year Docker, Inc. and containers were everywhere, starting with a dedicated container pre-day, then with constant traffic to the Docker booth, and many shared container success stories.
Container Fest Pre-Day
Build is usually a three-day event, but this year saw the very first pre-day – run jointly by Docker and Microsoft. “Container Fest” was a whole-day event focused on containers and Docker, running on Windows and Linux, on-premises and in Azure.
There were 12 sessions throughout the day, presented by engineers and architects from Microsoft and Docker, Inc. They covered everything from the internals of Docker on Windows Server, through modernizing .NET Framework apps with Docker, to the options for running Docker containers on Azure.
A popular first step for modernizing traditional Windows applications is to use Image2Docker, which we demonstrated at the event. Image2Docker can extract existing applications from Windows machines into Dockerfiles, so you can automate the conversion of your app landscape to Docker. You can see Image2Docker in action from our session at DockerCon:
Over 300 people were at the Container Fest pre-day, and when the sessions had finished, they stayed on to run through the Hands-On Labs Continue reading
The Latest Docker Certified Container and Plugins for March and April 2017
The Docker Certification Program provides a way for technology partners to validate and certify their software or plugin as a container for use on the Docker Enterprise Edition platform. Since the initial launch of the program in March, more Containers and Plugins have been certified and available for download.
Certified Containers and Plugins are technologies that are built with best practices as Docker containers, tested and validated against the Docker Enterprise Edition platform and APIs, pass security requirements, reviewed by Docker partner engineering and cooperatively supported by both Docker and the partner. Docker Enterprise Edition and Certified Technology provide assurance and support to businesses for their critical application infrastructure.
Check out the latest Docker Certified technologies to the Docker Store:
- Dynatrace provides monitoring Docker applications and Docker clusters out of the box.
- {code} by Dell EMC certified a number of REX-ray volume plugins for the following: REX-Ray for AWS EFS, REX-Ray for AWS EBS, REX-Ray for S3FS, REX-Ray for Isilon, REX-Ray for GCE and REX-Ray for ScaleIO.
- HPE OpsBridge Agent provides monitoring of Docker applications with HPE Operations Bridge.
- CoScale Agent provides a lightweight solution for monitoring the performance of your Docker containers and microservices Continue reading
DockerCon Hands-on Labs now online
One of more popular activities at DockerCon is our Hands-on Labs, where you can learn to use the Docker tools you see announced on stage, or talked about in the breakout sessions. This year we had eight labs for people to work through, ranging from 20 minutes to an hour in length.
We’ve now moved these apps into the Docker Labs Repo so that everyone can use them. The Docker Labs Repo is where we put a bunch of learning content for people who want to learn Docker, from beginner to advanced security and networking labs.
Here are the new labs:
Continuous Integration With Docker Cloud
In this lab, you will learn how to configure a continuous integration (CI) pipeline for a web application using Docker Cloud’s automated build features.
Docker Swarm Orchestration Beginner and Advanced
In this lab, you will play around with the container orchestration features of Docker. You will deploy a simple application to a single host and learn how that works. Then, you will configure Docker Swarm Mode, and learn to deploy the same simple application across multiple hosts. You will then see how to scale the application and move the workload across different hosts easily.
Continue reading
Mentorship in the Docker Community: How you can get involved
Mentorship is an important part of the Docker Community. Over the past few global event series like the Docker Birthday #3 and Mentor week last year, advanced users attended their local event and helped attendees work through training materials. As interest in mentorship continues to grow, we’re excited to grow our programs and provide more opportunities for the community to get involved.
New this year at DockerCon, we organized a Mentor Summit for attendees to learn the ins and outs of being an awesome mentor both in industry and in the Docker Community. Check out the talks below and learn how you can get involved.
Anna Osswoski – How to Mentor and be a Great One
View Anna’s slides here.
Sebastiaan van Stijn – How To Contribute to Open Source
Jérôme Petazzoni – A DockerCon 2017 Recap: give a talk in your local community
Are you an advanced Docker user? Join the Docker Mentor Group!
With over 280 Docker Meetup groups worldwide, the Docker online Community Group + Slack, and other programs, there is always an opportunity for collaboration and knowledge sharing. Mentors should have experience working with Docker Engine, Docker Networking, Docker Hub, Docker Machine, Docker Orchestration Continue reading
DockerCon Europe Registration and Call for Proposals are OPEN
DockerCon 2017 in Austin was amazing! We are still on a high from the energy and excitement that is created when 5,500 members of the Docker Community are in one place. Containers are everywhere, and the learning, inspiration and networking that those four days brings is unrivaled. We welcomed amazing speakers, made tons of meaningful connections and are already geared up to do it again for DockerCon Europe: October 16 – 19th in Copenhagen! Early Bird registration is now open, hurry up and get your ticket before they sell out.
Register for DockerCon Europe!
In addition, today we opened the DockerCon Copenhagen Call for Papers. We hope that you were inspired by the Moby Project and LinuxKit announcements and are looking forward to your submissions on the following:
Using Docker
Has Docker technology made you better at what you do? Is Docker an integral part of your company’s tech stack? Do you use Docker to do big things?
By giving concrete, first-hand examples, tell us about your Docker usage, share your challenges and what you learned along the way, and inspire us on how to use Docker to accomplish real tasks. When attendees leave your session, they should understand Continue reading
Open vSwitch Day at OpenStack Summit 2017
This is a “liveblog” (not quite live, but you get the idea) of the Open vSwitch Open Source Day happening at the OpenStack Summit in Boston. Summaries of each of the presentations are included below.
Kubernetes and OVN on Windows
The first session was led by Cloudbase Solutions, a company out of Italy that has been heavily involved in porting OVS to Windows with Hyper-V. The first part of the session focused on bringing attendees up to speed on the current state of OVS and OVN on Hyper-V. Feature parity and user interface parity between OVS/OVN on Hyper-V is really close to OVS/OVN on Linux, which should make it easier for Linux sysadmins to use OVS/OVN on Hyper-V as well.
The second part of the session showed using OVN under Kubernetes to provide networking between Windows containers on Windows hosts and Linux containers on Linux hosts, including networking across multiple cloud providers.
Lightning Talks
The lightning talks were all under 5 minutes, so a brief summary of these are provided below:
- Joe Stringer showed how to set up OVS with an OpenFlow controller (Faucet) to do networking between multiple hosts in 5 minutes or less.
- A gentleman (I didn’t catch Continue reading
Open vSwitch Day at OpenStack Summit 2017
This is a “liveblog” (not quite live, but you get the idea) of the Open vSwitch Open Source Day happening at the OpenStack Summit in Boston. Summaries of each of the presentations are included below.
Kubernetes and OVN on Windows
The first session was led by Cloudbase Solutions, a company out of Italy that has been heavily involved in porting OVS to Windows with Hyper-V. The first part of the session focused on bringing attendees up to speed on the current state of OVS and OVN on Hyper-V. Feature parity and user interface parity between OVS/OVN on Hyper-V is really close to OVS/OVN on Linux, which should make it easier for Linux sysadmins to use OVS/OVN on Hyper-V as well.
The second part of the session showed using OVN under Kubernetes to provide networking between Windows containers on Windows hosts and Linux containers on Linux hosts, including networking across multiple cloud providers.
Lightning Talks
The lightning talks were all under 5 minutes, so a brief summary of these are provided below:
- Joe Stringer showed how to set up OVS with an OpenFlow controller (Faucet) to do networking between multiple hosts in 5 minutes or less.
- A gentleman (I didn’t catch Continue reading
Docker Enterprise Edition Brings New Life Back to Legacy Apps at Northern Trust
Many organizations understand the value of building modern 12-factor applications with microservices. However, 90+% of applications running today are still traditional, monolithic apps. That is also the case for Northern Trust – a 128-year old financial services company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. At DockerCon 2017, Rob Tanner, Division Manager for Enterprise Middleware at Northern Trust, shared how they are using Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) to modernize their traditional applications to make them faster, safer, and more performant.
Bringing Agility and Security to Traditional Apps
Founded in 1889, Northern Trust is a global leader in asset servicing, asset management, and banking for personal and institutional clients. Their clients expect best-of-breed services and experiences from Northern Trust and Rob’s team plays a large role in delivering that. While their development teams are focused on microservices apps for greenfield projects, Rob is responsible for over 400 existing WebLogic, Tomcat, and .NET applications. Docker EE became the obvious choice to modernize these traditional apps and manage their incredibly diverse environment with a single solution.
Containerizing traditional applications with Docker EE gives Northern Trust a better way to manage them and some immediate benefits:
- Improved security: As a financial institution, security is a top priority. Continue reading
Liveblog: Deploying Containerized OpenStack: Challenges & Tools Comparison
This is a liveblog for an OpenStack Summit session on containerized OpenStack and a comparison of the tools used for containerized OpenStack. The speaker is Jaivish Kothari, from NEC Technologies. Two other speakers were listed on the title slide, but were apparently unable to make it to the Summit to present.
Kothari provides a brief overview of the session, then jumps into a discussion of deployment tools. As illustrated by one of his slides, there’s a huge collection of tools that are used to deploy OpenStack; some are “pure” deployment tools, others are configuration management tools. In this presentation, Kothari says he will focus specifically on OpenStack deployment tools, like Juju (Canonical), Fuel (Mirantis), Crowbar (Dell), and PackStack/TripleO (Red Hat), but I’m not sure how this relates to containerized OpenStack (per the session title).
According to Kothari, some of the challenges in “traditional” (non-containerized) deployment tools are best understood by looking at the challenges in deploying OpenStack:
- Difficulty related to deployment (conflicts due to services configuration, deployment still prone to failures)
- Ongoing lifecycle management of OpenStack components
This whole first section of the presentation was setting up the argument that containerizing your OpenStack control plane will help address these challenges. Continue reading
Liveblog: OpenStack Summit Keynote, Day 2
This is a liveblog of the day 2 keynote of the OpenStack Summit in Boston, MA. (I wasn’t able to liveblog yesterday’s keynote due to a schedule conflict.) It looks as if today’s keynote will have an impressive collection of speakers from a variety of companies, and—judging from the number of laptops on the stage—should feature a number of demos (hopefully all live).
The keynote starts with the typical high-energy video that’s intended to “pump up” the audience, and Mark Collier (COO, OpenStack Foundation) takes the stage promptly at 9am. Collier re-iterates a few statistics from yesterday’s keynote (attendees from 63 countries, for example). Collier shares that he believes that all major challenges humanity is trying to solve counts on computing. “All science is computer science,” according to Collier, which is both great but also represents a huge responsibility. He leads this discussion by pointing out what he believes to be the fundamental role of open source in machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI). Collier also mentions a collection of “composable” open source projects that are leading the way toward a “cloud-native” future. All of these projects are designed in a way to be combined together in a “mix-and-match” Continue reading
Liveblog: Kuryr Project Update
This is a liveblog of an OpenStack Summit session providing an update on the Kuryr project. The speakers are Antoni Segura Puimedon and Irena Berezovsky. Kuryr, if you recall, was a project aimed at making OpenStack Neutron functionality available to Docker containers; it has since expanded to also offer Cinder and Manila storage to Docker containers, and has added support for both Docker Swarm and Kubernetes as well.
According to Puimedon, the latest release of Kuryr has a diverse base of contributors, with over 45 active contributors.
So, what will be in the Pike release? For the Kubernetes-specific support:
- This will be the first release
- Support for Kubernetes Services (this leverages LBaaS v2)
- Client- and server-side SSL support
- RDO packaging
What’s planned for Pike, but may not actually make it? (Again, this is for Kubernetes support.)
- Token support
- Resource pools
- Improved support for Services defined as LoadBalancer type
On the Docker side, the following new features and enhancements will arrive in Pike:
- Support for Swarm mode
- IPv4 and IPv6 networking
- TLS support between Docker and the libnetwork plugin
On the Fuxi side, Kuryr is adding support for Manila shares.
At this point, Berezovsky takes over to discuss the release Continue reading
Liveblog: AT&T’s Container Strategy and OpenStack’s Role in it
This is a liveblog of the OpenStack Summit session titled “AT&T’s Container Strategy and OpenStack’s Role in it”. The speakers are Kandan Kathirvel and Amit Tank, both from AT&T. I really wanted to sit in on Martin Casado’s presentation next door (happening at the same time), but as much as I love watching/hearing Martin speak, I felt this like presentation might expose me to some new information.
Kathirvel kicks off the session with some quick introductions, then sets the stage for the session. Naturally, Kathirvel starts out by describing AT&T’s cloud deployment. (I say “naturally” because it seems that every presentation starts out with describing how great and how awesome the presenter’s company’s OpenStack cloud is.)
Following the discussion of AT&T’s cloud, Kathirvel launches into a discussion of container trends and demands. He indicates that he believes container usage (or demand?) for enterprise IT applications is huge (and will continue to be large), but doesn’t believe that will hold true for virtual network functions (VNFs) in telco clouds.
As for how containers and OpenStack may be coming together, Kathirvel describes three different use cases:
-
The first use case has OpenStack managing the infrastructure, with Kubernetes (or another container Continue reading
Liveblog: OpenStack Summit Keynote, Day 2
This is a liveblog of the day 2 keynote of the OpenStack Summit in Boston, MA. (I wasn’t able to liveblog yesterday’s keynote due to a schedule conflict.) It looks as if today’s keynote will have an impressive collection of speakers from a variety of companies, and—judging from the number of laptops on the stage—should feature a number of demos (hopefully all live).
The keynote starts with the typical high-energy video that’s intended to “pump up” the audience, and Mark Collier (COO, OpenStack Foundation) takes the stage promptly at 9am. Collier re-iterates a few statistics from yesterday’s keynote (attendees from 63 countries, for example). Collier shares that he believes that all major challenges humanity is trying to solve counts on computing. “All science is computer science,” according to Collier, which is both great but also represents a huge responsibility. He leads this discussion by pointing out what he believes to be the fundamental role of open source in machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI). Collier also mentions a collection of “composable” open source projects that are leading the way toward a “cloud-native” future. All of these projects are designed in a way to be combined together in a “mix-and-match” Continue reading
DockerCon 2017: all the session videos are now live!
We’re happy to announce that all the breakout session video recordings from DockerCon 2017 are now available online! Special shoutout to all the amazing speakers for making their sessions informative and insightful. All the videos are published on the Docker Youtube channel and the presentation slides available from the Docker Slideshare account.
Here are the links to the playlists of each track:
Use Case Track
Use case talks are about practical applications of Docker and are heavy on technical detail and implementation advice. Topics covered during this track were related to high availability and parallel usage in the gaming industry, Cloud scale for e-commerce giants, Security compliance and system, protocols legacy in financial and health care institutions.
Black Belt Track
Black Belt talks were deeply technical sessions presented by Docker experts. These sessions are code and demo heavy and light on the slides. From container internals to advanced container orchestration, security and networking, this track is a delight for the container experts in the room.
Docker Deep Dive
This track focuses on the technical details associated with the different components of the Docker platform: advanced orchestration, networking, security, storage, management and plug-ins. The Docker engineering leads walk you through the best way to Continue reading
Core Engine and Windows Updates in Ansible 2.3
Although the majority of the features added to Ansible 2.3 were networking related, that’s not all folks!
There were several significant changes around module management, the Core engine, and Microsoft Windows support we’d love to show off.
For full details on the release, check out the changelog here.
Module Management
In prior releases, Ansible was organized in two separate module repositories: Ansible-modules-core and Ansible-modules-extras.
The intent was to differentiate the repositories in terms of code quality, feature enablement, and supportability of the modules. We believe we’ve developed a better process.
At the launch of 2.3, Ansible has moved to a metadata-based system for modules. Ansible modules now include an ANSIBLE_METADATA Block which specifies a support category: Core, Curated or Community.
- Core - supported and maintained by the Ansible engineering team
- Curated - supported and maintained by the Ansible engineering team and Ansible by Red Hat partners
- Community - supported and maintained by the Ansible community
In the new system, modules will be following a specific process per category.
Core modules
Modules that the Ansible engineering team directly maintain, and will ship with Ansible. These modules also receive slightly higher priority for pull requests. Any issues that are opened Continue reading