7 Reasons for Getting Started with Docker for your next project

Docker is a container that allows you to package an application along with all its dependencies into a standard package for the development of its software. It has an extra layer of abstraction which gives an option of operating system level virtualization on Windows, Linux and Mac OS to develop Docker apps.

Now coming towards Docker introduction, it is an open source application software which exposes some high level API whose role is to provide lightweight containers to process so that they can run efficiently in isolation. Docker is built on top of Linux kernel and uses the functionality of kernel such as cgroups and namespaces which allows creation of single Linux instance for containers to work smoothly. Docker offers light-weight virtualization with a minimum overhead. This approach gives you an extra layer of abstraction and it will give you an option of running many containers on single machine as compared to virtualization.

In time span of just two years Docker has proved its mettle. Even the CEO of Docker Ben Golub has said in an interview with WSJ that "Docker is changing the way how big companies develop apps" So, here in this article we will give you & reasons to use Docker for your next project.

1. Lightning Fast

Docker is an open source application that facilitates shipping, building and running applications distributed on a network in a fast and effective way. By using Docker, an application can be assembled from its component quickly. It provides many pre-cooked containers in the community which speeds up creating, destroying and running applications in a container very fast and easy. It runs the process in an isolated user space on operating system of host and shares the kernel with some other containers. Therefore it alone can use the resources and is far more efficient and portable.

2. Libcontainer as Execution Environment

Libcontainer provides an interface for building Docker containers in an OS and through this interface an app deployed inside can be easily controlled. Parallels Google, Red Hat and Canonical will contribute on different functionality and will enhance it to make it more powerful. As Libcontainer is ported to other languages too it should not be surprising if Docker become a windows thing too. As lib container is an open source containerization products can be built on top of it.

3. Big Names Trust it

With just 2 years in the market Docker has garner attention of many big companies. It is an exemplary achievement in such a short span of time. BBC News wanted testing environment that can be changed easily and Docker was like a natural fit for them. EBay used Docker for their continuous integration process which is used to implement an efficient path from developer’s system through test and QA. Baidu used Docker because it replaces sandboxing with containerization and provides a cost effective and multi-language solution which provides flexibility to developers. Some other clients of Docker are PayPal, Illumina, Grubhub, Shopify, ING, Bunchball and many more.

4. Security and Segregation

Containers use Linux kernel to create isolated environments known as "chroot on steroids." Every container has its own independent environment, network stack, instance of file system and process space. Some security benefits are:

Containers make it easy to manage software and data through repeated use of scripted instruction in files.

Containers separate the applications which are running on same host. For example one container has access to the ports and other container has access to the files.

Through application update security patching can be done frequently and it also eases the effort of checking compatibility between patches and apps.

5. Component Reusability and Version Control

The debugging also becomes easier as the versions of the container can be tracked and compared to look at the differences. If the changes made to a version are not desirable you can easily rolled back to previous versions. The components are reused from the previous layers as a result it becomes extremely lightweight.

6. Consolidation on Server

Virtual machines are used for combining multiple applications similarly the application isolation feature of Docker allow us to consolidate multiple servers. This approach also saves you a lot of cost. When the memory footprints of multiple operating systems are not available and available memory is shared across instances, it makes Docker a lethal weapon which provides denser server consolidation than Virtual machine.

7. Ease of Deployment

It is very cumbersome task to move an entire application from development environment to production. There are many things to be looked upon like dependency on various libraries, operating systems, configuration of files, and resources used. Containers are faster than virtual machines and can be easily shipped around for deployments.

Docker takes an easier approach where applications and all its dependencies can be bundled together into a single container. The same container can be run on any other machine having Docker without any compatibility issues.

If we summarize the things it would not be wrong to say that Docker Development holds the future of Virtualization. It provides a consistent environment as the code travels form developer’s desk to production environment. It makes things very easy and there is hardly any work left in deployment pipeline. So if you are developer and want to learn this amazing technology then you can check out on Google for different websites which may offer docker tutorial, or lessons to get going in Docker development. As Docker can be used for multi-tenant applications, multiple instances can be created for each tenant which do not require major application rewrites. Hopefully after reading this article you must be feeling confident about Docker and are completely aware of the future that Docker holds in the field of virtualization.

Feel free to leave a comment below to let us know of some more advantages of using Docker for your next project.

I am a technical blog writer and content developer at Eduonix Learning Solutions, beside content writing I also love to discuss on topics related to web designing, SEO and other stuff which are trending in today's web development world.