Using Docker in production: Get started today!

Adopting Docker for production applications and services used to be hard. You had to hand-roll a lot of the underlying infrastructure and write lots of custom code for service discovery, load balancing, orchestration, desired state, etc. Today, with he rise of open source container orchestration platforms and cloud native offerings, it's a lot easier to get up and running.

Transcript

1. Using in production Get started today! By Clarence Bakirtzidis DevOps Chapter Lead @ Elabor8
2. Agenda • Motivations for containers • Quick recap of Docker • Docker: The past • Docker: The present • Operational concerns for adopting Docker in production • Live Demo: Docker laptop to the cloud • Docker platform choices • Q&A
3. Motivations for containers • Applications used to be: • Nearly always monolithic • Tightly coupled • Slow to change • Based on a single tech stack • Today applications are: • Decoupled • Continuously changing • Provisioned and scaled dynamically • Cloud native • Polyglot
4. Motivations for containers • Challenges with modern architectures • Supporting multiple tech stacks • Onboarding teams/individuals • Operational support • Lots of moving parts - complex infrastructure • Virtual Machines – not application centric, not portable, large and slow • Dynamic scheduling and scaling • Immutable infrastructure and Phoenix deployments • Designing CI/CD pipelines • Cloud infrastructure has made things a lot easier
5. Motivations for containers • Enter containers… • Lightweight virtualization in user- space • Share underlying OS kernel • Do not require a hypervisor • Resource isolation and constraints • Efficient use of resources on host • Not a new concept (see infographic) • Were not really designed for application developer ease of use • Docker changed this in 2013… Source: Pivotal Software, Inc. ("Moments in Container History") (https://content.pivotal.io/infographics/moments-in-container-history)
6. Quick recap of Docker • Docker is a … • … company (Docker, Inc.) • … project (now Moby Project) • … product/platform (Docker CE, Docker EE, etc.) • … ecosystem (community, support, plugins, Docker Store) • Founded in 2009 (formerly called dotCloud, Inc.) • “Docker” was released as an open source project in 2013 • Initially, a single monolithic binary, now made up of many components (runc, containerd, engine, client, etc.)
7. Quick recap of Docker • What was missing from widespread container adoption? • Containers were not easy to use for developers and operations • Focus was not on simplicity and user experience • Containers did not have a standard runtime or image format – no portability (see Open Container Initiative) • Standard tooling was missing (dev, ops, orchestration, registry, etc.) • No emphasis on re-use of components (Images, Layers, Docker Hub, Store) • No standard remote APIs • Docker addressed many of these issues • Docker reinforced the ideas behind microservices and 12 factor applications • Docker supported a laptop to production development lifecycle
8. Quick recap of Docker • Docker tools • Docker Engine (CE/EE) – assembled from upstream Moby components • Docker CLI • Docker Compose • Docker Machine • Docker Swarm (replaced by Swarm mode, now native to Docker Engine) • Docker Registry • Docker Cloud • Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) • Docker Trusted Registry (Image Signing, Scanning, RBAC) • Docker Universal Control Plane (UI to manage swarms, SSO, RBAC) • Certified components and support
9. Docker: The past • Single host • Initially, no official multi-host support • Use `docker run`, links, docker0 bridge, docker-compose, etc. • Multi host • Workarounds: ambassador pattern, services exposed on host port, legacy Swarm • Later, Docker Networks released with overlay networking (v1.8) and Network plugin support • No Windows support • No official Docker support on Windows • No native Windows containers with Docker • No Volume management • Workarounds: host directory mounting, Data-only containers • Later, Volume plugin support added with 3pp support for multi-host volume management • New `docker volume` commands added
10. Docker: The past • No Config and Secrets management • Reliance upon environment variables, host file binding, Config-only containers or external K-V stores • No secrets management – rely on external tools • No Automated Orchestration and Scheduling • No Desired State Reconciliation • No Service Discovery • No Healthchecking • No Load-Balancing • Limited Security Features • Underlying host security, e.g. SELINUX • Set Linux Kernel Capabilities on containers (division of root user actions)
11. Docker: The past (Docker networks)
12. Docker: The past (Service Registry and Service Discovery with Consul and Registrator)
13. Docker: The past (Docker Swarm - one API endpoint for multiple Docker hosts)
14. Docker: The past (Docker Swarm - Manager scheduling via constraints and default algorithm)
15. Docker: The past (Docker Swarm and Consul + Registrator)
16. Docker: The past (Adding Dynamic Load-Balancer Configuration) nginx.conf External load balancer re-write reload
17. Docker: The present • Rise of open source Container Scheduling and Orchestration Platforms • Cloud native support • Better integrated security • Native healthchecks • Swarm mode • Service concept – scaling, rolling updates, health checking, cluster-wide logs • Desired state reconciliation • Dynamic scheduling and orchestration • Stacks - deploy Compose V3 directly to Swarm mode
18. Docker: The present (Swarm Mode) Source: https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/how-swarm-mode-works/nodes/
19. Docker: The present (Swarm ingress load-balancing) Source: https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/how-swarm-mode-works/nodes/
20. Docker: The present (Docker EE for AWS) Source: https://github.com/aws-quickstart/quickstart-docker
21. Operational concerns for adopting Docker in production • Platforms • Choice of container scheduling and orchestration platforms • Build vs. Buy, Hosted vs. DIY, Cloud vs. On-prem • Linux vs. Windows, Multi-architecture (Linux + Windows) • Base images • Official, Custom, Minimal (e.g. alpine, scratch) • Registry • Self-hosted, Hosted 3pp, Docker Trusted Registry • Logging • SaaS (e.g. SumoLogic), Cloud native – e.g. CloudWatch Logs, DIY – ELK, Splunk, etc. • Monitoring • SaaS (e.g. DataDog), Cloud native – e.g. CloudWatch Metrics/Alarms, DIY – Prometheus, Graphite, etc.
22. Operational concerns for adopting Docker in production • Security • Secrets management, Image scanning and Signing, TLS • Storage Management and Migration • Volume drivers, Storage options • High-Availability • Scaling, Multi-instance, multi-region, Load-balancing, etc. • Multi-host Networking and Service Discovery • Deployment patterns • CI/CD pipelines, Docker Compose to Stack, Kubernetes Deployments, Single container per VM, etc.
23. Live Demo • We'll take an application from laptop to the cloud… • …using Docker CE for AWS
24. Docker platform choices • Docker CE/EE • Docker Cloud (Standard mode, Swarm mode) • Docker for Mac / Windows • Docker for AWS / Azure / GCP • Kubernetes - Vanilla upstream (kops, kubeadm) or Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes (conjure-up) • DC/OS (Mesos + Marathon) • HashiCorp Nomad (with Docker plugin) • IBM BlueMix Container Service (Kubernetes) • Google Container Engine (Kubernetes) • AWS EC2 Container Service (ECS) • AWS Elastic Beanstalk (Single container – EC2, Multi-container – ECS) • Azure Container Service (DC/OS, Swarm, Kubernetes) • Rancher (Cattle, Swarm, Kubernetes) • Heroku (Docker container support) • And more…
25. Q&A
26. The End Contact details Email - clarence.bakirtzidis@elabor8.com.au Twitter - @clarenceb_oz