A talk given at the AtlanTEC festival/conference (http://atlantec.ie/#atlantec-conference) in Galway, Ireland on Thursday, May 25th, 2017. This talk provides the background of how container popularity exploded in the past few years, the impact of Docker to this ecosystem, and why containers are interesting for developers and the enterprise in 2017.

1. Containers!
Why Docker?
Why now?
Phil Estes, IBM
@estesp

2. WHO AM I?
Phil Estes
Senior Technical Staff
Office of the CTO, IBM Cloud
Maintainer, Docker engine
Maintainer, containerd
Contributor, OCI/runc
Docker Captain
Blog: https://integratedcode.us
Twitter: @estesp
CLOUD

3. 1.
Containers!

4. WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO SOLVE APPLICATION -> INFRASTRUCTURE
DEPLOYMENT FOR A LONG TIME
SERVERS
Virtualization IaaS

5. WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO SOLVE APPLICATION -> INFRASTRUCTURE
DEPLOYMENT FOR A LONG TIME
SERVERS
Virtualization IaaS PaaS
Containers

6. WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO SOLVE APPLICATION -> INFRASTRUCTURE
DEPLOYMENT FOR A LONG TIME
SERVERS
Virtualization IaaS PaaS
Containers Serverless

7. WHY ARE CONTAINERS DIFFERENT?
Unix/chroot
BSD
FreeBSD jails/Solaris
zones
OpenVZ
Parallels
Cgroups
Process Containers
IBM/Google
AIX Wpars
IBM
LXC
1982 2000 Today2008200720062005
{Isolates by
emulating fully
booted OS
{Isolates using OS kernel
provided isolation features
from other processes

8. WHY ARE CONTAINERS DIFFERENT?
Unix/chroot
BSD
FreeBSD jails/Solaris
zones
OpenVZ
Parallels
Cgroups
Process Containers
IBM/Google
AIX Wpars
IBM
LXC
1982 2000 Today2008200720062005
{Isolates by
emulating fully
booted OS
{Isolates using OS kernel
provided isolation features
from other processes

9. DOCKER: GETTING DEVELOPER’S ATTENTION
▸ Abstracting away potentially confusing concepts
of OS-layer containerization
▸ Creating a public registry of common software
components
# docker run -ti ubuntu bash
root@c5eb61fd7b03: /# ls
bin boot dev etc home lib opt proc root sbin sys
root@c5eb61fd7b03: /# exit
# docker run -d -p 6379:6379 redis
5061d2661a3d212ee11dae488e1…
# redis-cli -h localhost
localhost:6379> ping
PONG
localhost:6379> exit
#
> BUILD
> SHIP
> RUN

10. “mean time to dopamine…
Sarah Novotny, Google
SIZE SPEED&
VM boot time: 30 seconds
to several minutes
container start time:
300ms to a few seconds

11. “mean time to dopamine…
Sarah Novotny, Google
SIZE SPEED&
VM boot time: 30 seconds
to several minutes
container start time:
300ms to a few seconds

12. 2.
The Container
Ecosystem

13. The Dockerfile
Easily create and
package application
+ content, used to
drive a repeatable
CI/CD pipeline with
immutable,
versioned images
The Image Format
A common
application image
format that could be
stored in a registry
and delivered in
binary form to the
runtime/compute
nodes
“docker pull/run”
A consistent and
developer-friendly
container engine UX
to transform
packaged
applications into
running instances on
worker nodes
THREE KEY COMPONENTS DRIVE ADOPTION
FROM ubuntu:16.04
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y nginx zip curl
RUN echo "daemon off;" >> /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
EXPOSE 80
CMD ["/usr/sbin/nginx", "-c", "/etc/nginx/nginx.conf"]
docker build -t mynginx:1.0.1 .
docker push mynginx:1.0.1
docker pull mynginx:1.0.1
docker run mynginx:1.0.1
BUILD SYSTEM
WORKER NODE

14. DEVELOPERS BRING CONTAINERS TO THE ENTERPRISE
January 2015: ETR notes Docker has
highest spending intention (96%)
ever recorded.
April 2017: ETR latest report has Docker
still“far to the right”in microservice tech.
with market penetration > 40%

15. DEVELOPERS BRING CONTAINERS TO THE ENTERPRISE
January 2015: ETR notes Docker has
highest spending intention (96%)
ever recorded.
April 2017: ETR latest report has Docker
still“far to the right”in microservice tech.
with market penetration > 40%

16. DEVELOPERS BRING CONTAINERS TO THE ENTERPRISE
January 2015: ETR notes Docker has
highest spending intention (96%)
ever recorded.
April 2017: ETR latest report has Docker
still“far to the right”in microservice tech.
with market penetration > 40%
CA
Riverbed
Solarbeds
Gomez (Compuware)
TIBCO
Nicara(Vmware NSX)
Ubuntu(Open Source Linux)
Commvault
Turbonomic (formerly VMTurbo)
Nutanix
NetScout
ServiceSource
March(Cisco)
IPsodt
MARKETPENETRATION
Market Penetration

17. A CONTAINER ECOSYSTEM EXPLODES ON THE SCENE
2015-early 2016

18. A CONTAINER ECOSYSTEM EXPLODES ON THE SCENE
Spring 2017

19. BASIC
BUILDING
BLOCKS
OF THE CLOUD NATIVE ECOSYSTEM
CONTAINERS ARE THE

20. 3.
So, why use
containers?

21. Common tools,
UX, integration
with CI/CD
systems, broad
runtime and
language
support,
developer
integrations
Developer
Agility
Security Microservices Portability/
Standards
Out of the box
“secure by default”
container engine
configuration
improves
application security
dramatically
Cloud native
architectures,
and specifically
the microservice
app model, are a
natural fit with
the container
ecosystem
Cross-industry
collaboration in
recently created
foundations are
building a set of
common standards
for runtimes,
images, and
components
FOUR KEY BENEFITS OF THE CONTAINER ECOSYSTEM:
CONTAINERS
(DevOps)
(Distributed
Systems)

22. DEVELOPER AGILITY
> PACKAGING SIMPLICITY
> RUNTIME PERFORMANCE
> ENVIRONMENT COMMONALITY
▸ Developers were the first to fall in love with
container technology:
▸ Environments and tools used in the facilitation of
DevOps practices are mainly container native
> CI/CD SYSTEMS & TOOLS
> PUBLIC CLOUD CAPABILITIES/SUPPORT
> LINUX DISTROS, DOCKER4MAC/WIN

23. SECURITY
▸ Docker focus on “secure by default” profiles
increases security posture of applications
“WE MOVED TO CONTAINERS
BECAUSE OF SECURITY NOT IN
SPITE OF SECURITY”
- ADP CTO, June 2016
▸ Intentional “Secure Software Supply Chain” focus
of the broader container ecosystem
> CONTAINER IMAGE SCANNING
> CRYPTOGRAPHIC SIGNING
> MUTUAL TLS/SECRETS (Docker Swarm)

24. MICROSERVICES (DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS)
▸ Container technology (the “build, ship, & run”
metaphor) is a natural fit to meet the
requirements of a microservice architecture
(building microservices means)
“CREATING SMALL, INDEPENDENTLY
RELEASABLE COMPONENTS THAT
COMMUNICATE OVER A NETWORK AND
CAN BE DEPLOYED INTO PRODUCTION
BY THEMSELVES”
- Sam Newman / BUILDING MICROSERVICES
▸ Container orchestration engines can help with the
increased complexity of distributed systems
> NETWORKING (SDN)
> SCALE UP/DOWN
> HIGH AVAILABILITY/FAILOVER

25. PORTABILITY (STANDARDS)
▸ Early concerns around Docker’s implied control of
the container ecosystem
▸ Other engines/implementations (CoreOS rkt,
Cloud Foundry Linux containers) meant a
potentially diverging community
COLLABORATION
COMPETITION
• An open governance structure for
creating an industry specification
for container runtime and image
format
• Free from ownership by any
particular vendor, operating
system, stack or client
• Not focused on standards or
specific technology choices, but an
umbrella for key projects to work
together as an industry
• Includes containerd, rkt,
kubernetes, and 7 others
• CNCF

26. ANATOMY OF A MORE PORTABLE DOCKER ENGINE
libnetwork
VolumeAPI
AuthZ
containerd
ctr-shim
runc
{
/usr/bin/docker
/usr/bin/dockerd
DOCKER
RUNC Docker Engine architecture
Docker 1.11 and above; April 2016-current

27. 4.
What is IBM
doing with
containers?

28. IBM CONTAINER ACTIVITY
▸ Public Cloud offering;
Bluemix Container Service
based on Kubernetes +
Docker engine

29. IBM CONTAINER ACTIVITY
▸ Public Cloud offering;
Bluemix Container Service
based on Kubernetes +
Docker engine

30. IBM CONTAINER ACTIVITY
▸ Public Cloud offering;
Bluemix Container Service
based on Kubernetes +
Docker engine

31. 5.
Summary

32. TAKING THE
NEXT STEP
CONSIDER CONTAINERS IN YOUR NEXT
DEVOPS OR MICROSERVICE JOURNEY
ASSESS WHO IS USING WHAT ALREADY
FROM A DEVELOPMENT STANDPOINT
DO YOUR RESEARCH; CHOOSE BASED
YOUR NEEDS & REQUIREMENTS

33. THANK YOU!
Phil EstesGitHub: https://github.com/estesp
Blog: https://integratedcode.us
Twitter: @estesp
CLOUD

34. CREDITS
Special thanks to all the people who made and released these
awesome resources for free:
▸ Simple line icons by Mirko Monti
▸ E-commerce icons by Virgil Pana
▸ Streamline iconset by Webalys
▸ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival