This is a high-level presentation I will be presenting to employees at Medavie. I thought it might be useful for other people as well. Its vendor agnostic.

1. Confidential © Medavie Blue Cross, not for distribution.
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Introduction to Containers, Cloud,
and how they will help

2. Confidential © Medavie Blue Cross, not for distribution.
Agenda
• What are Containers?
– Brief introduction to what they are
– List of where they thrive
• What is Cloud?
– Definition of the most common terms
– Highlights of the different delivery models
• So, how will these help?
• Our Approach
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What are Containers?3

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Starting point for Containers
• They aren’t remotely magical, just shiny.
• They aren’t a new concept; new
approaches around management have
come on the scene which made them
usable by more people. #GIFEE
• They aren’t going to take over the world,
at least not right away.
#GIFEE is Google Infrastructure for Everyone Else
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Ok, then what are containers?
• build based on an immutable contract, so
every instance is identical
• provide a layer of abstraction from the
underpinning operating system
• provide process isolation
• are ephemeral by design
• environment variables for configuration
• Extensions handle persistent data
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What makes up a container?
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Application
(Commercial or Custom)
Container contract defines:
• Application package
• Runtime platform
• 3rd party libraries
• Any persistent storage
Environment / Libraries / Runtime
Container Engine
Host OS
Virtual Server Physical Server
Build Steps by the Container Engine
1) Sets up network, storage, and environment variables
2) Retrieves and places all specified 3rd Party libraries
3) Retrieves and installs the specified runtime environment
4) Retrieves and installs the specified application package

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Types of technology involved?
Some examples of the technologies that you
will hear about with Containers:
• Host OS – Red Hat Linux, Vmware ESX, RancherOS,
CoreOS, Atomic, Ubuntu
• Orchestration and Scheduling – Kubernetes, mesos,
Swarm, marathon, fleet
• Registries – Nexus, Docker Hub, Quay, Artifactory
• Runtime Engines – Docker Engine, rkt
• Containers as a Service* – OpenShift, Tectonic, Docker
Datacenter
* Sub-category of Platform as a Service (PaaS) in terms of Cloud
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What is Cloud?8

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Starting point for Cloud
• On-demand and automated
• Let me repeat, on-demand and automated,
without both its not cloud.
• Private Cloud is when you own your own
equipment, or if it is reserved exclusively for
you.
• Public Cloud is the large providers that anyone
can and does use from small companies to
Netflix
• Hybrid Cloud is when you use both.
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Layers of Cloud (Diagram)
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“Cloud” layers (1/3)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) definition from the US
National Institute of Standards and Technology:
“The capability provided to the consumer is to provision
processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental
computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy
and run arbitrary software, which can include operating
systems and applications. The consumer does not manage
or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has
control over operating systems, storage, and deployed
applications; and possibly limited control of select
networking components (e.g., host firewalls).”
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“Cloud” layers (2/3)
Platform as a Service (IaaS) definition from the US
National Institute of Standards and Technology:
“The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto
the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired
applications created using programming languages,
libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The
consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud
infrastructure including network, servers, operating
systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed
applications and possibly configuration settings for the
application-hosting environment.”
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“Cloud” layers (3/3)
Software as a Service (IaaS) definition from the US
National Institute of Standards and Technology:
“The capability provided to the consumer is to use the
provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure.
The applications are accessible from various client devices
through either a thin client interface, such as a web
browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface.
The consumer does not manage or control the underlying
cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating
systems, storage, or even individual application
capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-
specific application configuration settings.”
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Definitions were TL;DR
(TL;DR == Too Long; Didn’t Read)
What the different layers actually provider:
• IaaS – A running Operating System of your
choice with the network, storage, and memory
you need
• PaaS – A place to deploy applications and
configure the services they require to run
• SaaS – Direct to consumer or business services
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Are those all the layers?
Yes, those are the major layers. Now being IT, we love to
complicate things with subcategories and renaming old
services to the cool new lingo.
Examples:
IaaS – STaaS (Storage), FWaaS (Firewall)
PaaS – CaaS (Containers), MBaaS (Mobile Backend), DBaaS
(Database), IDaaS (Identity)
And you can’t forget the other CaaS (Communications like
Skype) and ITaaS (Whole IT departments, used to be called
outsourcing)
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Examples of technology by layer
Some examples of the technologies that you
will hear about with Cloud:
• IaaS – OpenStack, Micro Focus Helion, HPE CSE, VMware
vCloud, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Nutanix,
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Digital Ocean, Microsoft
Azure
• PaaS – CloudFoundry, Salesforce Force.com and Heroku,
Red Hat OpenShift, HPE Stackato, IBM BlueMix, Pivotal
• SaaS – Pick your favorite web site that provides you a
service without from Facebook to Salesforce.com
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So, how will this help?17

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So, How will these help?
Better use of our resources
– System resources can be built as needed then
shut off afterwards based on need instead of
our “just in case we need it again” model.
– We can assign any extra capacity on-the-fly to
speed up batch processing, or run more
automated tests, or even mine bitcoin (ha
ha).
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So, How will these help?
Better use of your time
– Letting you focus on improving your
application or enhance services on you
technology component at your pace.
– No more routine 10+ person cross-team
meetings to help diagnose problems.
Everything is decomposed and all stats are
available to everyone.
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Our Approach20

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Our Approach
• We will not wait for every piece of the
puzzle to be ready before we start.
• We will get there piece by piece.
• This is a journey, not a destination.
”Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your
good is better and your better is best.”
- St Jerome, ~400AD
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