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Announcing the DockerCon speakers and sessions

Today we’re excited to share the launch the DockerCon 2017 agenda. With 100+ DockerCon speakers, 60+ breakout sessions, 11 workshops, and hands on labs, we’re confident that you’ll find the right content for your role (Developer, IT Ops, Enterprise) or your level of Docker expertise (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced).

 

View the announced schedule and speakers lineup  

 

Announced sessions include:

Use Case

  • 0 to 60 with Docker in 5 Months: How a Traditional Fortune 40 Company Turns on a Dime by Tim Tyler (MetLife)
  • Activision’s Skypilot: Delivering Amazing Game Experiences through Containerized Pipelines by Tom Shaw (Activision)
  • Cool Genes: The Search for a Cure Using Genomics, Big Data, and Docker by James Lowey (TGEN)
  • The Tale of Two Deployments: Greenfield and Monolith Docker at Cornell by Shawn Bower and Brett Haranin (Cornell University)
  • Taking Docker From Local to Production at Intuit by JanJaap Lahpor (Intuit)

The Use Case track at @dockercon looks great w/ @tomwillfixit @JanJaapLahpor @drizzt51 #dockercon
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DockerCon Speakers

Using Docker

  • Docker for Devs by John Zaccone (Ippon Technologies)
  • Docker for Ops by Scott Couton (Puppet)
  • Docker for Java Developers by Arun Gupta (Couchbase) and Fabiane Nardon (TailTarget)
  • Docker for .NET Developers by Michele Bustamante (Solliance)
  • Creating Effective Continue reading

The Linux Migration: Virtualization Provider

As part of my migration to Linux as my primary laptop OS, I needed to revisit my choice of virtualization provider. Long-time readers probably know that I was an early adopter of VMware Fusion, starting way back in 2006 with the very first “friends and family” release (before it was even publicly available). Obviously I can’t use Fusion on Linux, but do I use VMware Workstation for Linux? VirtualBox? Or something else? That’s what I set out to determine, and in this post I’ll share what I selected and the reasoning behind my selection.

So what were the options to consider? While there may be some other solutions, these are the three I primarily assessed:

  • VMware Workstation for Linux 12.5.2
  • VirtualBox 5.1.14
  • “Native” Linux KVM, supplemented by Libvirt and a GUI like GNOME Boxes (installed by default in Fedora 25)

Since I have been using Vagrant quite a bit over the last few years, whatever solution I selected needed to work reasonably well with Vagrant.

I’m pretty familiar with KVM and Libvirt, so I started there. Given that KVM and Libvirt are “native” to Linux, it felt like it would be a clean solution. While Continue reading

Adventures in GELF

If you are running apps in containers and are using Docker’s GELF logging driver (or are considering using it), the following musings might be relevant to your interests.

Some context

When you run applications in containers, the easiest logging method is to write on standard output. You can’t get simpler than that: just echo, print, write (or the equivalent in your programming language!) and the container engine will capture your application’s output.

Other approaches are still possible, of course; for instance:

In the last scenario, this service can be:

  • a proprietary logging mechanism operated by your cloud provider, e.g. AWS CloudWatch or Google Stackdriver;
  • provided by a third-party specialized in managing logs or events, e.g. Honeycomb, Loggly, Splunk, etc.;
  • something running in-house, that you deploy and maintain yourself.

If your application is very terse, or Continue reading

Installing VirtualBox 5.1 on Fedora 25

Last fall, I wrote a piece about why I had switched to VirtualBox (from VMware Fusion) for my Vagrant needs. As part of my switch to Fedora Linux as my primary laptop OS, I revisited my choice of virtualization provider. I’ll describe that re-assessment in a separate post; the “TL;DR” for this post is that I settled on VirtualBox. As it turns out, though, installing VirtualBox 5.1 on Fedora 25 isn’t as straightforward as one might expect.

After a number of attempts (using a test VM to iron out the “best” procedure), here’s the process I found to be the most straightforward:

  1. Run dnf check-update and dnf upgrade to pick up the latest packages. If a new kernel version is installed, reboot. (I know this sounds contrived, but I’ve run into issues where some kernel-related packages aren’t available for the kernel version you’re actually running.)

  2. Install the RPMFusion repos. You only really need the “free” repository, but you can install the “nonfree” as well if you like (it won’t affect this process). I won’t go through the process for how to do this; it’s really well-documented on the RPMFusion web site and is pretty straightforward.

  3. Next, use Continue reading

Spousetivities at DockerCon 2017

DockerCon 2017 is coming up in mid-April in Austin, TX, and Spousetivities will once again be offering activities for folks traveling to Austin with conference attendees. This is Spousetivities’ second time at DockerCon, and Crystal has a great lineup of activities planned.

Here’s a quick preview of the activities organized for DockerCon:

  • Trip to Magnolia Market (from HGTV’s “Fixer Upper”)
  • Tour of LBJ State Park
  • Visit to Fredricksburg
  • Sightseeing through the Hill Country around Austin
  • Lunch at the Salt Lick BBQ

Austin in the spring should be a great place to visit, and Crystal has some really enjoyable activities planned—it’s a great reason to bring your spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, significant other, or family member with you to Austin when you come for DockerCon. Of course, the chance to win some great prizes is nice too…

Crystal’s blog post on the Spousetivities site has a few more details, and registration is open right now.

Technology Short Take #77

Welcome to Technology Short Take #77. I’ve got a new collection of links and articles from around the Web on various data center-focused technologies.

Networking

Q&A: 15 Questions AWS Users Ask About DDC For AWS

Docker is deployed across all major cloud service providers, including AWS. So when we announced Docker Datacenter for AWS (which makes it even easier to deploy DDC on AWS) and showed live demos of the solution at AWS re:Invent 2016 it was no surprise that we received a ton of interest about the solution. Docker Datacenter for AWS, as you can guess from its name, is now the easiest way to install and stand up the Docker Datacenter (DDC)  stack on an AWS EC2 cluster. If you are an AWS user and you are looking for an enterprise container management platform, then this blog will help answer questions you have about using DDC on AWS.

In last week’s webinar,  Harish Jayakumar,  Solutions Engineer at Docker, provided a solution overview and demo to showcase how the tool works, and some of the cool features within it. You can watch the recording of the webinar below:

We also hosted a live Q&A session at the end where we opened up the floor to the audience and did our best to get through as many questions as we could. Below, are fifteen of the questions that we received from the audience. We selected Continue reading

More DockerCon Speakers Announced

Today, we are announcing the next group of awesome DockerCon speakers and we can’t wait for the lessons, stories, tips, tricks and insights they will share.

  • Need tips on how to create effective images, even when you have to include a bunch of image processing libraries?
  • What about learning how other organizations are taking Docker into production and adopting DevOps?
  • Want to deep dive into the Docker internals from Docker’s technical staff?

Join us at the largest container conference in the world to hear these stories and many more DockerCon speakers from the community. 

Docker Security Deep Dive

Journey to Docker Production: Evolving Your Infrastructure and Processes

Creating Effective Docker Images

Plug-ins: Building, Shipping, Storing and Running

Docker for Ops

Docker Networking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern Storage Platform for Containerized Environments

Do you really want to attend sessions from these DockerCon speakers, but are having a hard time convincing your manager on pulling the trigger to send you? Have you already explained that sessions, training and hands-on exercises are definitely worth the financial investment and time away from your desk?

Well, fear not! We’ve put together a few more resources and reasons to help Continue reading

The Linux Migration: Final Linux Distro Selection

In my Linux migration initial progress report, I provided an early assessment of the Linux distribution that I thought I would use moving forward. At that time, I had selected Ubuntu. Since that time, though, I’ve pivoted a bit and selected a different Linux distribution as the operating system (OS) for my primary laptop moving forward. In this post, I’d like to describe why I selected Fedora.

My original reasons for selecting Ubuntu 16.04 were as follows:

  • Hardware support
  • Performance
  • Leading but not bleeding edge
  • User interface

These are all valid reasons, but as I continued to compare Ubuntu against Fedora 25 I realized that some of these factors weren’t as critical as I’d originally thought:

  • Hardware support: I initially targeted Ubuntu because it runs really well on Apple hardware. Fedora, on the other hand, doesn’t run quite as well on Apple hardware. Since I’m coming from the OS X world, I initially placed some emphasis on support for Apple hardware. The reality is, though, that I need a Linux distribution that does a great job of supporting my new work laptop, not one of my leftover Mac laptops. My experience with Fedora 25 on the Dell E7370 Continue reading

Convince your manager to send you to DockerCon

Has it sunk in yet that DockerCon is in roughly 2 months? That’s right, this year we gather in April as a community and ecosystem in Austin, Texas for 3 days of deep learning and networking (with a side serving of Docker fun). DockerCon is the annual community and industry event for makers and operators of next generation distributed apps built with containers. If Docker is important to your daily workflow or your business, you and your team (reach out for group discounts) should attend this conference to stay up to date on the latest progress with the Docker platform and ecosystem.

Do you really want to go to DockerCon, but are having a hard time convincing your manager on pulling the trigger to send you? Have you already explained that sessions, training and hands-on exercises are definitely worth the financial investment and time away from your desk?

Well, fear not! We’ve put together a few more resources and reasons to help convince your manager that DockerCon 2017 on April 17-20, is an invaluable experience you need to attend.

Something for everyone

DockerCon is the best place to learn and share your experiences with the industry’s greatest minds and the guarantee Continue reading

Looking Ahead: My 2017 Projects

For the last few years, I’ve been sharing my list of projects for each year (here’s the list for 2012, the list for 2013, 2015’s list, and last year’s list—I didn’t do a list for 2014). Toward the end of each year, I also publish a “report card” assessing my performance against that year’s list (here’s the 2016 assessment). In this post, I’m going to share my list of planned projects for 2017.

Without further ado, here’s the list for 2017:

  1. Finish the network automation book. One way or another, the network automation book I’m writing with Jason Edelman and Matt Oswalt is getting finished in 2017. (It’s available now as an Early Access edition if you’d like to give it a look and provide some feedback.)

  2. Launch an open source book project. This is something I’ve been tossing around for a while now. Since my efforts at making code contributions to an open source project aren’t going so well (though I’m going to keep moving in that direction), I figured I’d contribute in a way I know I can do. This is going to be a “cookbook”-style book, and the goal I’m setting Continue reading

Review: Dell Latitude E7370

As part of my Linux migration (see my initial progress report), late this past week I started setting up my first non-Apple laptop since 2003. In this post, I’d like to share my thoughts on my new laptop, a Dell Latitude E7370.

First, let’s get the specs—the “speeds and feeds”—out of the way:

  • Intel Core m7 CPU
  • 16 GB of RAM
  • 512 GB NVMe SSD
  • 3200x1800 touchscreen
  • Intel HD graphics and Intel 802.11a/b/g/n/ac wireless

Based on the specs alone, it’s easy to see this laptop is no slouch. It’s certainly comparable to the latest-generation of MacBook Pro laptops, except for the touchscreen (which the Macs don’t offer/support).

Subjectively, I have to say I’m impressed with the E7370. I travel quite a bit, so size and weight are important. This laptop looks and feels more svelte than my previous laptop, a 13” MacBook Air. From a comparison perspective, I’d say it’s on par with my son’s 11” MacBook Air. The build quality is great, and the laptop feels solid and sturdy. The display is crisp, sharp, and bright, and battery life (so far, without any OS-level tuning) has been respectable. Unlike some previous ultrabooks I’ve seen, Dell’s done Continue reading

Docker Online Meetup recap: Introducing Docker 1.13

Last week, we released Docker 1.13 to introduce several new enhancements in addition to building on and improving Docker swarm mode introduced in Docker 1.12. Docker 1.13 has many new features and fixes that we are excited about, so we asked core team member and release captain, Victor Vieux to introduce Docker 1.13 in an online meetup.

The meetup took place on Wednesday, Jan 25 and over 1000 people RSVPed to hear Victor’s presentation live. Victor gave an overview and demo of many of the new features:

  • Restructuration of CLI commands
  • Experimental build
  • CLI backward compatibility
  • Swarm default encryption at rest
  • Compose to Swarm
  • Data management commands
  • Brand new “init system”
  • Various orchestration enhancements

In case you missed it, you can watch the recording and access Victor’s slides below.

 

Below is a short list of the questions asked to Victor at the end of the Online meetup:

Q: What will happened if we call docker stack deploy multiple times to the same file?

A: All the services that were modified in the compose file will be updated according to their respective update policy. It won’t recreate a new stack, update the current one. Same Continue reading

Docker Meetup Community reaches 150K members

We are thrilled to announce that the Docker meetup community has reached over 150,000 members! We’d like to take a moment to acknowledge all the amazing contributors and Docker enthusiasts who are working hard to organize frequent and interesting Docker-centric meetups. Thanks to you, there are 275 Docker meetup groups, in 75 countries, across 6 continents.

There were over 1000 Docker meetups held all over the world last year. Big shout out to Ben Griffin, organizer of Docker Melbourne, who organized 18 meetups in 2016,  Karthik Gaekwad, Lee Calcote, Vikram Sabnis and Everett Toews, organizers of Docker Austin who organized 16 meetups, Gerhard Schweinitz and Stephen J Wallace, organizers of Docker Sydney who organized 13, and Jesse White, Luisa Morales and Doug Masiero from Docker NYC who organized 12. 

We also wanted to thank and give a massive shout out to organizers Adrien Blind and Patrick Aljord have grown the Docker Paris Meetup group to nearly 4,000 members and have hosted 46 events since they launched the group almost 4 years ago!

 

Why IT Automation is Becoming a Business Necessity

ansible-automation-whiteboard-1.png

Automation transformed factories. It gave manufacturing the ability to perform work faster, more efficiently, at higher quality. Processes became predictable. Productivity thrived. Factories that failed to automate fell behind. Automation became a business imperative.

IT departments are the modern factories powering today’s digital businesses. And just as today’s factories can’t compete without automation, automation will soon become imperative for IT organizations. Here’s why:

  1. Application delivery is fuel for growth. Today every business is a software business, regardless of whether you actually sell software. Every business depends on critical systems to engage with customers and gather data. For companies competing in the knowledge economy, IT operations is oxygen. The demands businesses place on DevOps teams will only continue to increase. We’re not going back—only forward, faster.

  2. Automation simplifies processes. Automation never sleeps. Throwing people at the problem helps companies grow, but the law of diminishing returns limits your ability to scale. Adding people adds complexity and costs.

  3. IT professionals don’t want to repeat the same tasks over and over. Just as manual work in factories is tiring, endless, and thankless—repetitive work squanders the creative energy of your best and often most highly paid people.

  4. Automation speeds the work so your people Continue reading

CPU Management in Docker 1.13

Resource management for containers is a huge requirement for production users. Being able to run multiple containers on a single host and ensure that one container does not starve the others in terms of cpu, memory, io, or networking in an efficient way is why I like working with containers. However, cpu management for containers is still not as straightforward as what I would like. There are many different options when it comes to dealing with restricting the cpu usage for a container. With things like memory, its is very easy for people to think that , --memory 512m gives the container up to 512mb. With CPU, it’s hard for people to understand a container’s limit with the current options.

In Docker 1.13 we added a --cpus flag, which is the best tech for limiting cpu usage of a container with a sane UX that the majority of users can understand. Let’s take a look at a couple of the options in 1.12 to show why this is necessary.

There are various ways to set a cpu limit for a container. Cpu shares, cpuset, cfs quota and period are the three most common ways. We can just go Continue reading

Introducing Docker 1.13

Today we’re releasing Docker 1.13 with lots of new features, improvements and fixes to help Docker users with New Year’s resolutions to build more and better container apps. Docker 1.13 builds on and improves Docker swarm mode introduced in Docker 1.12 and has lots of other fixes. Read on for Docker 1.13 highlights.

Docker 1.13

Use compose-files to deploy swarm mode services

Docker 1.13 adds Compose-file support to the `docker stack deploy` command so that services can be deployed using a `docker-compose.yml` file directly. Powering this is a major effort to extend the swarm service API to make it more flexible and useful.

Benefits include:

  • Specifying the number of desired instances for each service
  • Rolling update policies
  • Service constraints

Deploying a multi-host, multi-service stack is now as simple as:

docker stack deploy --compose-file=docker-compose.yml my_stack

Improved CLI backwards compatibility

Ever been bitten by the dreaded Error response from daemon: client is newer than server problem because your Docker CLI was updated, but you still need to use it with older Docker engines?

Starting with 1.13, newer CLIs can talk to older daemons. We’re also adding feature negotiation so that proper errors are returned if a new Continue reading

Technology Short Take #76

Welcome to Technology Short Take #76, the first Technology Short Take of 2017. Normally, I’d publish this on a Friday, but due to extenuating circumstances (my mother-in-law’s funeral is tomorrow) I’m posting it today. Here’s hoping you find something useful!

Networking

Plain Text Productivity Redux

Almost 2 years ago, I set out on an experiment in plain text productivity. I won’t say the experiment was a failure; I did learn from the experiment, and gaining knowledge is usually a positive outcome. In the end, I switched back to OmniFocus, the OS X- and iOS-specific app I’d been using previously. In the last few weeks, though, I’ve revisited the idea of a plain text productivity system as part of my migration to Ubuntu Linux as my primary desktop OS, and I think I’ve resolved some of the issues that were present in my last attempt.

To recap, in my previous attempt I settled on the TaskPaper format (named after the OS X app of the same name). The format is extraordinarily flexible, and the OS X app is more powerful than you might expect. However, I uncovered some issues that made the solution untenable; namely:

  1. Handling future tasks is a problem.
  2. Handling repeating tasks is a problem.
  3. Handling tasks with due dates is a problem.
  4. Handling lots of tasks is a problem.
  5. Keeping task lists synced across computers can be a problem.

At the time, the app had no way to dynamically respond to Continue reading

Enabling an Apple MBP Wireless Adapter with Fedora 25

In this article, I want to share with you the steps I took to enable wireless networking on an older (mid-2011) 13” MacBook Pro running Fedora 25. This is driven by a continued need to evaluate Fedora 25, as I’ve run into a few potential roadblocks with Ubuntu 16.04 as my primary laptop OS. Using Fedora 25 instead may help resolve some of these issues, which primarily center around corporate collaboration.

First, you’ll want to enable the RPM Fusion repositories. This is pretty well documented on the RPM Fusion web site. This link will take you to the configuration page, which will provide links for graphical setup via your browser as well as CLI commands.

Once the RPM Fusion repositories (both Free and Nonfree) repositories are enabled, then it’s just a matter of installing a few packages:

  1. First, install the “kernel-devel” package appropriate for your current kernel. The command to use is:

     sudo dnf install "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"

    This could be user error on my part, but I’ve found that it’s necessary to use the full package (including version) instead of just “kernel-devel”. Otherwise, Fedora seems to have a tendency to install the latest package, which may not Continue reading

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