Containerization.

Containers, specifically Docker Containers, are all the rage these days. People in tech love new shiny things, and this is one of those shiny things. There’s a good reason to use containers. 

Containerization is known in software development as a tool that typically runs within virtualization. Virtualization allows more efficient use of computer hardware and serves as the foundation to delivering computing services to provide better resources, quicker service, lower costs, elevation of business and flexibility; better known as cloud computing.  

“Containerization is defined as a form of operating system virtualization, through which applications are run in isolated user spaces called containers, all using the same shared operating system (OS). A container is essentially a fully packaged and portable computing environment: Everything an application needs to run – its binaries, libraries, configuration files and dependencies – is encapsulated and isolated in its container. The container itself is abstracted away from the host OS, with only limited access to underlying resources – much like a lightweight virtual machine (VM). As a result, the containerized application can be run on various types of infrastructure—on bare metal, within VMs, and in the cloud—without needing to refactor it for each environment.” What is Containerization? – Containerization Definition 

With containerization, users can work on a project using remote resource procedures. The container is used to create blocks within the system that produce better productivity, stability and operational effectiveness. Containers help with management of projects, allow less overhead, provide data availability, security, scalability and elasticity. With containers, more resources can be spun up, or taken down quickly and easily through scalability configuration.  

Containers are portable and lightweight and make developing software that much easier. They allow developers to be more productive and lets them be able to produce without stopping due to system differences. “Containers offer a logical packaging mechanism in which applications can be abstracted from the environment in which they actually run. This decoupling allows container-based applications to be deployed easily and consistently, regardless of whether the target environment is a private data center, the public cloud, or even a developer’s personal laptop. Containerization provides a clean separation of concerns, as developers focus on their application logic and dependencies, while IT operations teams can focus on deployment and management without bothering with application details such as specific software versions and configurations specific to the app.” What are Containers and their benefits 

Containers are often compared to virtual machines, but that’s not the whole picture. In modern cloud architecture, many virtual machines run on a single server. Within that single machine, many containers can be running on a single OS. It’s almost like tiny virtual machines running within a virtual machine. Containers are fast, portable and agile. Both containers and VM’s are critical tools in modern software DevOps. Containerization and the use of containers is increasing in the software development industry.