Compare Docker for Windows options

As part of Dockercon 2017, there was an announcement that Linux containers can run as hyperv container in Windows server. This announcement made me to take a deeper look  into Windows containers. I have worked mostly with Linux containers till now. In Windows, I have mostly used Docker machine or Toolbox till now. I recently tried out other methods to deploy containers in Windows. In this blog, I will cover different methods to run containers in Windows, technical internals on the methods and comparison between the methods. I have also covered Windows Docker base images and my experiences trying the different methods to run Docker containers in Windows. The 3 methods that I am covering are Docker Toolbox/Docker machine, Windows native containers, hyper-v containers.

Docker Toolbox

Docker Toolbox runs Docker engine on top of boot2docker VM image running in Virtualbox hypervisor. We can run Linux containers on top of the Docker engine. I have written few blogs(1, 2) about Docker Toolbox before. We can run Docker Toolbox on any Windows variants.

Windows Native containers

Comparing Docker deployment options in public cloud

Few weeks back, I gave a presentation in Container conference, Bangalore comparing different solutions available to deploy Docker in the public cloud.

Slides are available here. I have also put the steps necessary along with short video for each of the options in the github page here.

Abstract of the talk:

Containers provide portability for applications across private and public clouds. Since there are many options to deploy Docker Containers in public cloud, customers get confused in the decision making process. I will compare Docker machine, Docker Cloud, Docker datacenter, Docker for AWS, Azure and Google cloud, AWS ECS, Google Container engine, Azure Container service. A sample multi-container application will be deployed using the different options. The deployment differences including technical internals for each option will be covered. At the end of the session, the user will be able to choose the right Docker deployment option for their use-case.

Note:

• I have focused mainly on Docker centric options in the comparison.
• There are few CaaS platforms like Tectonic, Rancher that I have not included since I did not get a chance to try them.
• Since all the solutions are under active development, some of the gaps will get covered by the solutions in the future.

Hybrid cloud recent solutions from Microsoft and VMWare – 2 different ends of the hybrid cloud spectrum

Public clouds have grown tremendously over the last few years and there are very few companies who do not use public cloud at this point. Even traditional enterprises with in-house data centers have some presence in the public cloud. I was looking at Amazon’s re:Invent conference details and I was amazed by the number of new services and enhancements that were announced this year.  It is very difficult for private clouds to keep up in pace with the new features of public cloud. There is no doubt that public clouds will overtake private clouds in the long term. Private clouds still have a wide deployment and there will be enough use cases for quite some time to deploy private cloud. The use cases includes regulated industries, compute needed in remote locations not having access to public cloud and some specialized requirements that public clouds cannot meet. For some enterprises, private cloud would make more sense from a costing perspective. Having hybrid cloud option is a safe bet for most companies as it provides the best of both worlds. I saw 2 recent announcements in hybrid cloud that captured my attention. One is Azure stack that allows running Azure stack in private cloud. Another is VMWare cloud on AWS that allows running entire VMware stack in AWS public cloud. I see these two services as 2 ends of the hybrid cloud spectrum. In 1 case, public cloud infrastructure software is made to run on private cloud(Azure stack) and in another case, private cloud infrastructure software is made to run on public cloud(Vmware cloud on AWS). In this blog, I have tried to capture more details on these 2 services.

Hybrid cloud

There are predominantly 2 options currently to run Private cloud. 1 option is to use vendor based cloud management software along with hardware from same vendor.