Every ten years, a new IT program, or a gadget, or anything that involves technology, is given birth. Sporadically, it gets to branch out to different types per product. And while that happens, innovation after innovation tends to surface making a computer product much better than ever. This time around, it’s about something that helps our hearts from the inside. While it is hard to keep up with all of the latest trends, one that had gone through ground-breaking transformations are the virtual machines turning into containers. This goes the same with containerisation.
What are containers, and how does containerisation happen?
Let's say I am doing a webpage for a cooking website in which a series of apps altogether are being used simultaneously. In my webpage, a guest may access freebies such as Recipes under 5 minutes, The ABCs of salt, etc. And so, there are pages that I use for making the actual webpage. And there’s a specific app for setting up the membership, that will surely involve payments. So, if you use containers, the program that you are using is in an invisible container. So that one page doesn't necessarily have to be affected when a user just wanted to take a look at videos on how it's being done rather than reading. So, what happens is, sitting in front of the computer watching a video may be done through the app being in a container, dependent on other programs.
This makes containers beneficial to web developers because it breaks the apps into smaller operating systems that are easily manageable. You may also consider them as the lighter version of virtual machines, but with a lean system of requirements.
What else are the other benefits of containerisation?
- Costs – Since it makes everything in its simplest and that direct, it need not go through a set of connectors and other servers, this makes the costs for transport a whole lot less.
- Availability – because the containers are still like virtual machines, they weigh lighter and thus, offer major benefits. They virtualise at a higher level than VMs.
- Enhanced Productivity – Containerisation promotes a fast-developing environment while providing a platform for developers with a new level of efficiency.
Containerisation as a major innovation
Because of its ability to help simplify the process of installation while decreasing dependency errors, giving you much-needed leeway when having your applications installed. On top of that, containerisation avoids major headaches in development for projects that need to be on more than one platform, so instead of developing an app for Windows PC, then having to rewrite it for Macs, we just need to containerise the Windows app, and it will be able to run on Mac structure as is. Containers are often used in cloud computing, which is a new and emerging field of Information Technology. Developers often upload their containers onto Docker hubs to share their projects for download. An example would be toolkit developers Operatr, who have a docker hub for Kafka monitoring.
The big question is if it's the future of virtual computing.
As we have mentioned earlier, containers are still virtual machines with great upgrades. While virtual machines require hardware, containers applications are run straight to the server that hosts them. This gives you a hint that containers should be fast enough than virtual machines. And this is because of the limited overhead.
While we're at it, people are curious as to if containers are better than virtual machines. That would be a YES since it enables a user or a company to load a lot more applications into a single physical server. Also, VM's had to take up several systems resources. It runs a full operating system copy and the virtual copy of all the hardware that the OS needs to run.
To conclude, whether you're using Docker containers or not, you can run an app depending on whether it is in a virtual machine or on bare metal. Just like any decision made at the data centre, align the path you want to take with your business. If you're wondering whether containers work well with virtual machines, they can run without them.