Working with containers in the enterprise often can seem daunting to a business which has no experience with them. Developers and DevOps teams alike can benefit from implementing containers into their infrastructure and pipeline, as a solid container-based development workflow not only allows for flexible and agile application development but with testing, staging, and bug fixes. Containers have seen a variety of improvements in the last year including better container visibility, enhanced log management, improved security, and a focus on scalability.
Whether working with Kubernetes pods, Docker Swarm, or Mesos, choosing the correct container solution will ultimately depend on the scale, infrastructure, and availability needs of one’s organization. Mesos and Docker have both addressed scale, with both Mesos and Docker able to scale out easily. With its recent acquisition of Conductant, Inc. Docker hopes to re-imagine how enterprises can use Docker Swarm to better orchestrate their stack. “Docker technologies provide us with key building blocks for a system that would share the same guiding principles as Google’s Borg in terms of scalability, productivity, and operational efficiency. Yet, the reach can go far beyond that of any single cloud provider,” said Bill Farner, Conductant Co-Founder & CEO and Technical Staff member at Docker.
Visibility into one’s containers is an issue that many enterprises face when first getting started with them. Whether utilizing an all-in-one container deployment solution such as Bitnami, or working with a managed container visibility platform such as Rancher Labs, DevOps teams must be aware of their infrastructure needs when operating at scale. Bitnami has recently helped companies such as GoDaddy to create an OpenStack powered series of cloud servers similar to Amazon AWS. Rather than re-inventing the wheel when adopting containers for use at scale, Australasian enterprises may want to consider utilizing all-in-one application deployment and management solutions such as Bitnami.
Rancher Labs allows one’s team to select from popular container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes and Docker, allowing IT teams to easily manage, scale, and diagnose issues with their running services and infrastructure regardless of what it’s running on top of. “The hurdle to date has been in finding a management platform that supports all of the major orchestration frameworks and can run on any cloud or on-premise infrastructure. Rancher Labs has adopted a compelling approach to addressing this problem with its platform,” said Judith Hurwitz, President and CEO, Hurwitz & Associates.
Securing containers is something that all DevOps and IT teams should be concerned with, for good reason. Data housed in containers that aren’t secure can lead to not only service disruption from vulnerable sources, but leaks of private user data. Twistlock offers Docker users container security for organizations both large and small, each with its own benefits. It provides a free Developer’s Edition to smaller DevOps teams, whilst its enterprise offering is built to handle the stringent security requirements found in many enterprise settings. With features such as run-time defense, vulnerability management, and smart policies, Twistlock is a strong choice for securing one’s containers.
Offering the DevOps community a free version of our Container Security Suite will benefit developers and small dev teams that are eager to benefit from the innovation and agility that container technologies offer.
-- Dr. Chenxi Wang, Chief Strategy Officer, Twistlock.
When it comes to working with containers at scale, Australasian DevOps teams have a variety of platforms available to help them work smarter, not harder. Through understanding when to avoid recreating the wheel, to securing containers in production, software development continues to require agility and flexibility which the aforementioned tools hope to provide today’s enterprises.
