Today we will be focusing on containers and why containers have become the future of DevOps. For this we will be looking at a blog by Rajeev Gandhi and Peter Szmrecsanyi which highlights the benefits of containerization and what it means for the developers like us.
Containers are isolated unit of software running on top of OS i.e., only applications and their dependencies. Containers do not need to run full operating system; we have been using Linux operating system kernel through docker and using capabilities of our local system hardware and OS (windows or macOS). When we remote accessed SPSS and logic works through virtual machine, VM came loaded with full operating system and its associated libraries which is why they are larger in size and much slower compared to containers that are smaller in size and faster. Containers can also run anywhere since docker (container) engine supports almost all underlying operating systems. Containers can also work consistently across local machines and cloud making containers highly portable.
We have been building containers for our DevOps by building and publishing container (docker) images. We have been working on files like api and backend in development containers preloaded with libraries and extensions like preview swagger. We then make direct changes in the code and push them into containers – this can lead to potential functionality and security risks. Therefore, we can change the docker image itself. Instead of making code changes on backend, we are building image with working backend code and then coding on frontend. This helps us avoid accidental changes to a working backend, but we must reconstruct the container if we are making changes to the container image.
Containers are also highly compatible for deploying and scaling microservices, which are applications broken into small and independent components. When we will be working on Libre food pantry microservices architecture, we will have five to six teams working independently on different components of the microservices in different containers giving us more development freedom. After an image is created, we can also deploy a container in matter of seconds and replicate containers giving developers more experimentation freedom. We can try out minor bug fixes, or new features and even major api changes without the fear of permanent damage on the original code. Moreover, we can also destroy a container in matter of seconds. This results in faster development process which leads to quicker releases and upgrades to fix minor bugs.
Source:
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/the-benefits-of-containerization-and-what-it-means-for-you
https://www.aquasec.com/cloud-native-academy/docker-container/container-devops/
From the blog CS@worcester – Towards Tech by murtazan and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.