Background Have you ever tried to get runc to work? Did you have that WTF moment where you were like, this is weird, and annoying, and why do I even need to know this? When, I use docker, everything just works. Well, I am here to help. Why might you want to get ninja with
How do you buy a used Linux container? A quick search of “how to buy a shipping container” will turn up a wealth of information, especially how to evaluate used ones. While all analogies are imperfect, this one is pretty good and it does highlight an interesting problem – basically, any Linux container image over
The Paths Forward In Container Portability: Part2: Code Portability Today, we discussed how there are no regression tests, there is no complete interface standard, there is definitely pain ahead if we think we can use today’s container images (level 3B) on tomorrow’s container hosts (level 3A), 10 years from now. So, what’s the solution? With
Like in the physical world of shipping containers, the OCI container image and runtime formats are critical because they allow for infrastructure and investment to happen among a bunch competing and collaborating entities. Vendors can invest in building an ecosystem of tools, orchestrators, registry servers, etc. Users can extract value from the ecosystem, move containers where
Continue Reading “The Open Containers Initiative: Software Containers vs. Shipping Containers”
Code Portability Today In Container Portability: Part 1: A Brief History in Code Portability, we explored the genesis of code portability and visited structured computer organization to highlight the six commonly found levels in modern computing. Revisiting the six layers – nobody debates the portability of the upper two layers – Application Programmers know that C
A Brief History in Code Portability Do you know why you can take a Python program and run it on any computer that has a Python interpreter on it? Well, because the computer industry has made a huge amount of investment into providing portability over the last 70 years. In the beginning, computers didn’t have
The Container Host *is* the Container Engine, and Container Image Compatibility Matters Have you ever wondered, how are containers are so portable? How it’s possible to run Ubuntu containers on CentOS, or Fedora containers on CoreOS? How is it that all of this just magically works? As long as I run the docker daemon on
Continue Reading “Why Portability is Not the Same Thing as Compatibility”
This presentation is a 16 slide introduction to what must be thought about when building a production cloud. Proper image management is critical engineering task.
Continue Reading “DockerCon 2017: Austin: The Cube Interview”
RHEL Atomic Host requires a lot less configuration than a full RHEL Server installation. The docker daemon is installed and configured, storage is already setup to use device mapper on a dedicated LV, and the default tools necessary to install OpenShift are already installed. And as a bonus, the installation on my laptop in KVM virtual machines is about 10X as fast as installing a full RHEL installation.
Continue Reading “Building an OpenShift Lab: Why I Used Atomic Host”
Background Last week, I was in Westford, MA for an engineering meeting. I was chatting with one of our Base Runtime engineers Petr Sabata, and an interesting subject came up. He joked, “I understand containers, I know how to use them, but I still haven’t converted any of *my* services to containers.” This got me
Continue Reading “Documenting the Experience: Moving Crunchtools to Containers/OpenShift: Part 1”