Cloud Computing in Docker Era

Cloud computing in Docker era

Docker is creating ways to orchestrate the Container based application deployments. It has the potential to change the IT infrastructure with its own functionalities which may replace some current architecture.

Image source: Docker

In today’s Cloud Computing world, if we need to request for a computer resource, basically we request a new Virtual Machine. But usage of Containers may change that. The Container based deployment only considers the application’s computing needs and its environment dependency needs. Here, the Cloud provider may need to understand the Docker’s containers rather than the Docker’s architects need to understand the cloud.

Image source: Docker

Pivotal is a software company who is taking advantage of Docker. They use Docker to launch Cloud workloads in Amazon Web Services. Also Docker’s acquisition of SocketPlane was an important event in the its journey to change the distributed application deployment structure. We will see more details about these two events in the following paragraphs.

Docker in Public Cloud :

Pivotal will provide a Virtual appliance that will bring Docker into Amazon Web Services. Also Pivotal’s on premise Cloud Foundry users can deploy their application in Amazon Web Services with the same Environment. Here Docker Engines and Docker services are doing the configuration, load balancing and orchestration jobs and Cloud is simply providing the Virtual Machine to run Docker on it. In this Pivotal’s Cloud foundry example, the Pivotal Appliance will manage how the networking should be configured for these applications inside the containers instead of letting cloud provider define that. Still it’s a complex process to come to a conclusion about Docker’s networking inside the public cloud datacenter. Looks like Docker is planning something big with its March 2015 acquisition of SocketPlane.

Software Defined Networking in Docker:

Socketplane had seven employees who has good experience in the Software Defined Networking ( SDN ). For the container based Docker engineers, they needed software defined networking expertise to achieve their goal. So, this acquisition will help the Docker to move on towards their journey. Here Docker can define and innovate the software defined networking to use in the cloud datacenters.   Docker connects the network to the applications itself instead of virtual machine level. Socketplane’s CEO Madhu Venugopal is joining Docker team to improve Dockers SDN architecture.

Orchestration Tools of Docker:

Docker providing three tools for the orchestration. They are Docker Machine, Docker Compose and Docker Swarm.  These tools are in beta and will be improved to make the Docker experience more effective.

Docker already getting more attention from the Developers world. Now, developers need to give more feedback to the Docker team to improve the User Experience . Cloud Service Providers and the Docker team should sit together to bring the Docker into the production which may even replace some functionalities of the current Cloud Datacenter architecture.