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An Extensive Guide To Containerization And Some Of the Best Practices

Programmers yet may not have hands-on experience of working with containers and IT environment management tools. But containers definitely has made life easy for hundreds of thousands of developers and have increased the application performance with minimal effort.

Programmers yet may not have hands-on experience of working with containers and IT environment management tools. But containers definitely has made life easy for hundreds of thousands of developers and have increased the application performance with minimal effort.

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<strong>An</strong> <strong>Extensive</strong> <strong>Guide</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>Containerization</strong><br />

<strong>An</strong>d <strong>Some</strong> <strong>Of</strong> The <strong>Best</strong> <strong>Practices</strong><br />

With <strong>the</strong> expansion and explosion of cloud computing arena, <strong>the</strong> need for containers is just<br />

getting a rise. If you are a tech-savvy programmer, you would have heard of “containers” and<br />

how <strong>the</strong>y are changing <strong>the</strong> game of complex programming. The usage of <strong>the</strong> same is gaining all<br />

<strong>the</strong> attention from <strong>the</strong> industry. <strong>An</strong>d it’s not a surprise that with so much of ease and flexibility,<br />

big Giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are adopting this approach.<br />

Few quality highlights are Adaptability, Efficiency, and High speed. Container approach<br />

simplifies dozens of task and also manages many applications. Erstwhile, managing hardware<br />

dedicatedly was a costly affair and more like a Tetris game. But container satisfied it all. A<br />

Container is a small file that combines <strong>the</strong> application code along with <strong>the</strong> libraries and o<strong>the</strong>r<br />

dependencies which are needed to run.


Regardless of <strong>the</strong> environment in which <strong>the</strong> application has to be run, a container packages <strong>the</strong><br />

application libraries, environmental variables, software binaries configuration and more. It is a<br />

small file but with maximum flexibility and runs at a super speed owing to <strong>the</strong> usage of some<br />

underlying host operating system’s resources. This also means various applications will have<br />

one underlying operating system and treats each application on its own.<br />

Programmers yet may not have hands-on experience of working with containers and ​IT<br />

environment management tools​. But containers definitely has made life easy for hundreds of<br />

thousands of developers and have increased <strong>the</strong> application performance with minimal effort.<br />

Here is <strong>the</strong> guide that sheds some light on <strong>the</strong> best benefits of working with containers and<br />

have an efficient ​IT environment management​. Administrators can create containers and run<br />

many of <strong>the</strong>m at a time, which consequently reduces <strong>the</strong> computing time and storage load.<br />

They are cloud-friendly in nature, which allows <strong>the</strong> automatic deployment of <strong>the</strong> same. Few<br />

o<strong>the</strong>r benefits are:


Lightweight:<br />

It is not required to have a full OS installed per application. It shares <strong>the</strong> machine OS Kernel<br />

which makes <strong>the</strong>m small and compact in size and easy on resources.<br />

Efficient and Scalable:<br />

Since <strong>the</strong> size of <strong>the</strong> container is considerably small, <strong>the</strong>y can easily be spin up and deleted<br />

whenever required. It makes <strong>the</strong> IT environment agile, which fur<strong>the</strong>r helps in growing business<br />

leaps and bounds. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to have thousands of containers in a single<br />

computing environment.


Portable:<br />

As described above, a container has all <strong>the</strong> dependencies, libraries covered with it. This means<br />

it can run on a variety of computing environments without consuming much time and making<br />

<strong>the</strong> complicated process much easier. Also, it extends support to automation replacing <strong>the</strong><br />

manual scripting. This way, it creates a more guaranteed and maximised portability.<br />

Supports agile development:<br />

Containers are created, keeping in mind <strong>the</strong> cloud-first development. Being agile, containers<br />

support continuous integration for a DevOps environment.


It offers enhanced computing capabilities:<br />

<strong>An</strong> application can be divided into many domains all within one single container. Owing to <strong>the</strong><br />

highly portable nature, <strong>the</strong> execution of containers on different cloud platforms becomes easy<br />

and efficient. The developers have <strong>the</strong> freedom to choose <strong>the</strong> platform on which <strong>the</strong>y want<br />

<strong>the</strong>ir application to run depending on <strong>the</strong> cost and performance efficiency requirement.<br />

Leverages policy-based optimisation:<br />

The automation facility provides an extra layer which will help in locating <strong>the</strong> best platform to<br />

execute <strong>the</strong> application. Also, <strong>the</strong> containers deal automatically with <strong>the</strong> configuration and<br />

meet <strong>the</strong> requirement.<br />

The next part focuses on practices that can be implemented for<br />

scaling containers:<br />

● Invest sufficient time for designing a proper architecture of container-based<br />

applications. Insufficient and poor designs often lead to scaling issues with containers;


●<br />

●<br />

●<br />

It is advisable to have a proof of concept in order to find out <strong>the</strong> real scaling capabilities.<br />

It is allowed to take <strong>the</strong> help of automated testing tools for stimulating <strong>the</strong> workloads<br />

and a considerable amount of data for ​Test environment management tool​.<br />

Do not follow <strong>the</strong> approach followed by o<strong>the</strong>rs. The company’s requirement may differ<br />

from <strong>the</strong> one you are taking inspiration from. What works for <strong>the</strong>m may not work for<br />

your company.<br />

Do not compromise or overlook <strong>the</strong> security and governance of <strong>the</strong> application. Along<br />

with <strong>the</strong> scaling of containers, even <strong>the</strong>se properties have to be scaled.<br />

The scaling factor may confuse and look a bit tricky, but with sufficient understanding and<br />

knowledge of <strong>the</strong> containers and <strong>the</strong> technology, you can bloom out <strong>the</strong> right scalable strategy.<br />

<strong>Containerization</strong> thus gives wings to <strong>the</strong> administrators for running more applications than ever<br />

before. It helps <strong>the</strong> team build robust and agile applications in less time and involving fewer<br />

efforts. So let’s get Containerizing and cope up <strong>the</strong> business with <strong>the</strong> changing business<br />

scenario.


CONTACT US<br />

Company Name : Enov8<br />

Contact Person : Ashley Hosking<br />

Address : Level 5, 14 Martin Place, Sydney, 2000, New South Wales, Australia.<br />

Phone(s) : +61 2 8916 6391<br />

Fax : +61 2 9437 4214<br />

Website :- ​https://www.enov8.com

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