Question

Docker containers can be considered a new era of virtualization that has fundamentally changed the IT industry. For this discussion question, provide a brief response that describes a Docker container and how a container differs from a hypervisor. What potential do you see in Docker containers?

Answer 1

Brief description of a Docker container:

Docker is very basically, a software. A Docker is a software development platform that uses containers for applications to build, test, and deployment. It is an open-source. It packs applications with all the required code, libraries, and other dependencies in containers. The end product is a package. Docker is a set and package of platform-as-a-service products. It uses virtualization at the Operating System (OS) level. It delivers software in packages called containers. Hence, a container makes itself an isolated environment for running an application reliably, seamlessly, portably, and quickly. Docker is an OS for containers.

These containers are isolated from one another. They pack and make it a set of their own software, libraries, and configuration files. All the containers communicate amongst themselves through well-defined channels.

Dockers package applications in containers, making them portable to run on Linux or Windows Operating System machines or servers. Hence, Docker is a tool or software to easily create, deploy, and execute (run) applications using containers.

How a container differs from a hypervisor:

Containers provide isolation of applications capability providing a virtual platform to run applications. The isolation of the containers and their security makes the developers run many containers at the same time on a single host. Containers virtualize an OS to run multiple workloads on a single OS instance. Containers do not virtualize any guest OSs on a given host physical server hardware. Containers are less secure than the actual virtualization provided by hypervisors. Containers consume less time to create than the time hypervisors take to create guest OSs.

The hypervisor runs Virtual Machines (VMs) which would have their own OSs using hardware VM support. Hypervisor virtualizes the hardware to run multiple guest OS instances on single physical server hardware. Hypervisors provide more security than containers. It takes more time for hypervisors to create guest OSs when compared to containers.

Potential seen in Docker containers:
Docker is a booming brand, well known, and major player in the market of containers. It is a modern platform for developers to use it for high-velocity innovations. It saves money, provides seamlessness, improves resource utilization, standardizes operations, and ships more software or code faster and makes building and running distributed microservices architectures easy. There are many other benefits that can be exploited using Docker container technology.