Containerization and microservices seemed to have leaped out of nowhere and smack into the center of the enterprise IT scene. But neither leaped from nowhere. Both containerization and microservices have been part of the fabric of enterprise tech for some time—within Linux for containers and service-oriented architecture for microservices.
Largely, thanks to containerization, both now are moving quickly to become central components of enterprise tech. Containers in recent years—and especially in recent months—have moved from tools used in development environments to production. And the ability to manage containers as discrete services is enabling enterprises to be able to respond quickly and be agile to technology demands.
According to a recent survey from app performance vendor NGINX, of roughly 1,800 IT professionals, while container and microservices software adoption is limited it’s use is accelerating. The survey found that only 20 percent of respondents said they are using containers in production, while about one-third are doing the same for microservices.
That survey, not surprisingly, indicated that microservices and container use will continue to accelerate, as roughly two-thirds of respondents said that they are currently evaluating containers and 70 percent microservices.
Microservices are workloads that perform a single task and they are not dependent on the infrastructure or other applications for their ability to complete their designated task or “service.” Microservices are very effective at providing enterprises the ability to rapidly build software that solves business problems. They also make it possible for development teams to scale their efforts and build a more resilient architecture.
With all of that in mind, and considering the nature of the inflection point most enterprises find themselves in now, we’ve assembled this microservices and containerization survival guide. The guide consists of some of the most important storage on microservices and container management that we’ve ran in the past year.
DevOps Teams: Containers Will Help You Become Future Ready
According to The State of Containers 2015 Docker Adoption Survey, more than 70 percent of respondents are either using Docker or evaluating for future use. Given the overwhelming popularity of containers, this post provides three trends that DevOps teams must be prepared for.
7 Web Interfaces for Container Management and Orchestration
Managing containers used to be a command-line affair. But a rich and growing ecosystem of web-based interfaces for containers has now emerged. This post provides an overview of the different web UIs available for container management and orchestration.
‘Containers-as-a-Service’ Is a Hot Trend
Containers are still sort of the new kid on the IT block, but already containers-as-a-service is emerging as a thing. Here’s what you need to know.
A Closer Look at Container Monitoring
Enterprises have to ensure that all of their microservices perform well and provide their services as designed. Beyond that, how much do they really need to know about what’s going on inside their containers? The answer to this question varies. In this post Gerald Haydtner provides an overview for container-monitoring options.
Containers: Not One to Rule Them All
When it comes to the container platform ecosystem, not all container platforms are created equal. This post will help you sort through the options.
Building Microservices: A Few Considerations
An experienced practitioner details the top five design considerations when building microservices.
5 Docker Best Practices You Should Follow
Support for Docker has been integrated into many products and platforms and a lot of organizations are either already using Docker containers or trying to understand how to do so themselves. Our Tony Bradley provides the Docker best practices one needs to know to succeed.
How to Choose a Cloud Platform for Containers
Containerization has broadened from one or two vendors to a broader, more container-agnostic world and a drive to better scalability, redundancy, interoperability and security. Amazon, Google and Microsoft each have their own unique approach to addressing these cloud container concerns as they battle each other for supremacy. Here’s a look at how to evaluate each.
Container Security: Why Bother?
Are containers secure? Probably not. But knowing each approach’s strengths and risks—and available options—could help ease adoption.
Container Security Challenges: Are Container Scanners Enough?
How secure are containers? Not very, according to open source company Red Hat, which has published a blog post blasting the container ecosystem for lacking good security processes. Here’s a synopsis of what Red Hat has to say about container security, and some additional perspective.
For Container Security, Automation Is Key
Regardless of the IT infrastructure element in question, if it connects to a network—even through proxies or human intermediaries—eventually someone will find a security flaw and exploit it. Compatibility issues with new applications or infrastructure elements will emerge. Because of these reasons, all IT infrastructure elements need to be managed, without exception.
Containers and Security Q&A: Putting a Lid on Risk
How do containers affect security? And how can IT teams do everything they need to do in order to ensure the containers in use are as secure as they reasonably can be?
