Book Image

Getting Started with Containerization

By : Dr. Gabriel N. Schenker, Hideto Saito, Hui-Chuan Chloe Lee, Ke-Jou Carol Hsu
Book Image

Getting Started with Containerization

By: Dr. Gabriel N. Schenker, Hideto Saito, Hui-Chuan Chloe Lee, Ke-Jou Carol Hsu

Overview of this book

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration platform for managing containers in a cluster environment. This Learning Path introduces you to the world of containerization, in addition to providing you with an overview of Docker fundamentals. As you progress, you will be able to understand how Kubernetes works with containers. Starting with creating Kubernetes clusters and running applications with proper authentication and authorization, you'll learn how to create high-availability Kubernetes clusters on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and also learn how to use kubeconfig to manage different clusters. Whether it is learning about Docker containers and Docker Compose, or building a continuous delivery pipeline for your application, this Learning Path will equip you with all the right tools and techniques to get started with containerization. By the end of this Learning Path, you will have gained hands-on experience of working with Docker containers and orchestrators, including SwarmKit and Kubernetes. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Kubernetes Cookbook - Second Edition by Hideto Saito, Hui-Chuan Chloe Lee, and Ke-Jou Carol Hsu • Learn Docker - Fundamentals of Docker 18.x by Gabriel N. Schenker
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

The container ecosystem


There has never been a new technology introduced in IT that penetrated the landscape so quickly and so thoroughly than containers. Any company that doesn't want to be left behind cannot ignore containers. This huge interest in containers from all sectors of the industry has triggered a lot of innovation in this sector. Numerous companies have specialized in containers and either provide products that build on top of this technology or build tools that support it.

Initially, Docker didn't have a solution for container orchestration thus other companies or projects, open source or not, tried to close this gap. The most prominent one is Kubernetes which was initiated by Google and then later donated to the CNCF. Other container orchestration products are Apache Mesos, Rancher, Red Hat's Open Shift, Docker's own Swarm, and more. 

More recently, the trend goes towards a service mesh. This is the new buzz word. As we containerize more and more applications, and as we refactor those applications into more microservice-oriented applications, we run into problems that simple orchestration software cannot solve anymore in a reliable and scalable way. Topics in this area are service discovery, monitoring, tracing, and log aggregation. Many new projects have emerged in this area, the most popular one at this time being Istio, which is also part of the CNCF.

Many say that the next step in the evolution of software are functions, or more precisely, Functions as a Service (FaaS). Some projects exist that provide exactly this kind of service and are built on top of containers. One prominent example is OpenFaaS.

We have only scratched the surface of the container ecosystem. All big IT companies such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, Red Hat, IBM, and more are working feverishly on containers and related technologies. The CNCF that is mainly about containers and related technologies, has so many registered projects, that they do not all fit on a poster anymore. It's an exciting time to work in this area. And in my humble opinion, this is only the beginning.