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Why Docker is a Long Term Future for Platform?

What make Docker so popular and long-lasting?

  • Container is essentially OS level virtualization. Each application gets illusion of its own OS, having almost absolute control over it. Another advantage is that host OS knows about the container processes and hence can share its resources among hosted containers.
  • The concept of containers was started by FreeBSD, refined by Solaris and re-implemented by Linux.
  • Containers are better than two other levels of virtualization:
    • ABI/platform level, where application integrates with the platform (Google App Engine), doesn’t scale well.
    • Hardware level, where a virtual hardware runs the OS (e.g. virtual machines, hypervisors).
  • Docker containers run close to the real hardware, and host OS has knowledge of resource usage. Hence it’s an optimal sweet spot for virtualization.
  • Joyent SmartOS is built on OpenSolaris and provides Solaris features to Linux like Docker containers. It acheives that by allowing Linux APIs translated to Solaris APIs. Everything runs on the bare metal hence.
  • SmartOS containers get ZFS, Dtrace by default 🙂
  • SmartOS containers are very secure as they run in zones.

I hope to cover Smart OS design internals, Docker container on Linux details in next posts.

Reference

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Notes on Dockerfile and Build Cache

Dockerfile is an instruction set to set up a new container. It looks like a BASH script that serially runs all the mentioned commands. The commands are predefined by Dockerfile syntax.

Unlike BASH script, Dockerfile runs and applies effects of a command to the output of the previous step. Each step of a Dockerfile creates, by default, a container which is kept hidden. You can list such ephemeral containers by running following command:

$ docker images -a

All containers with <none> name are ephemeral.

Why Docker need Ephemeral Containers

  • Each ephemeral container acts as a cached output of a step in the Dockerfile.
  • Next container build would use the cached output instead of running the step again.

How it Works?

  • Each step starting from the from base checks if the next step has cached output.
  • The check is with the asked instruction and the instruction that was run by the cached output.
  • If instructions do not match, the cache is invalidated. The step is built normally.
  • To disable caching, provide the no-cache option. 
    $ docker build --no-cache ...

Reference

Posted development

Docker: network unavailable on the container

Scenario

Network connectivity is available on the host.
Container is unable to make any out-connection.

Look out for the following message:

WARNING: IPv4 forwarding is disabled. Networking will not work.

If the above message occur, just restart the host machine. It is most likely due to fresh docker installation on the host that needs a restart.

Written with StackEdit.

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