Containers

What are containers?

Containers provide a method to encapsulate code, binaries, libraries, and runtimes. They act as a form of virtualization for an operating system. Containers are run on container orchestrators that provide the scheduling and high availability benefits. The most commonly used containers and container orchestrators are built on open source software, more on this below.

Why are containers important in a cloud setting?

Containers are one of the main drivers of modern software development and designing applications for clouds in general. However, containers become more important in a hybrid cloud or multicloud setting where consistency and repeatability are key.

Why should developers learn about containers?

Our O’Reilly survey showed that nearly 70% of respondants indicated containers are either extremely or very important to their career growth. With only 10% of respondants indicating that containers are not important.

There were similar results when asked about Kubernetes.

Key open source projects

Container engines and runtimes

	GitHub repo	Governing body	Get Started guide
Podman	https://github.com/containers/podman	TBD	https://podman.io/getting-started/
containerd	https://github.com/containerd/containerd	graduated CNCF	https://containerd.io/docs/getting-started/

Container orchestrators

	GitHub repo	Governing body	Get Started guide
Kubernetes	https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes	CNCF	https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/

Container registry

	GitHub repo	Governing body	Get Started guide
Quay	https://github.com/quay/quay	TBD	https://docs.quay.io/solution/getting-started.html
Harbor	https://github.com/goharbor/harbor	graduated CNCF	https://goharbor.io/docs/2.3.0/install-config

Cloud comparision

	IBM Cloud	GCP	AWS	Azure
Kubernetes service	IKS	GKE	EKS	AKS
Supported versions	1.18 - 1.21	TBD	TBD	TBD
Container runtime	containerd	Docker, containerd	Docker, containerd	Docker, containerd
Container registry	based on Quay	TBD	TBD	TBD

Additional learning

Big Data

Databases