What is a container?
Speaking professionally, Containers are a way to realize operating system virtualization, allowing users to run applications and their dependencies in a resource-isolated process; simply put, containers are an isolation method based on Linux kernel technology.
Many people think of containers It is another kind of virtual machine (VM). In fact, the virtual machine runs the corresponding application through the Guest OS, and the container is isolated by using the system’s native isolation technology by using the Docker Engine.
why this way? what are the benefits? This starts with the emergence of PaaS.
PaaS(Platform- as-a-Service (Platform as a Service) regards the server platform as a business model for providing services. The previous PaaS platform used VMs to deploy platform application services, but due to the characteristics of VM startup, it takes a long time to deploy an application. In the early stage, such a deployment can also meet the needs of enterprises, but with the development of the Internet, enterprises increasingly need to adapt to rapidly changing business scenarios. The uncontrollable environment deployed on the host and the start-up time have become the development of the PaaS platform. Resistance: In the later stage, microservice architecture and continuous integration deployment of CI/CD are popular, and PaaS deployment applications must have new solutions.
So, the container follows Born from it——
In 2000, the concept of container technology first appeared, called “FreeBSD jail” at the time. It was born to allow processes to be created in a modified chroot environment without being separated from Affect the entire system. In the environment, access to file systems, networks, and users are all virtualized.
In 2001, the isolation environment implementation entered the Linux field. After completing the basic work of multiple controlled user spaces, the Linux container gradually took shape and eventually developed into what it is now.
In 2007, Google’s control group (CGroups) was successfully developed. This is a mechanism that can limit, record, and isolate the physical resources used by process groups, and contribute to the Linux kernel.
In 2008, LXC (LinuX Containers) appeared, which was the first complete implementation of Linux container manager.
In 2013, Docker was born. At the beginning, Docker was created to make it easier to use LXC, but later this role was replaced by other technologies, and Docker became the standard for container use. Other container technologies such as LXC, Rocket, Pouch, etc. had insufficient market share than Docker. half.
The container is a PaaS platform Brings the following features:
< p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Microsoft Yahei, sans-serif; font -size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Environmental consistency. Through the container and its unique file system, the application is highly consistent in the development, testing, and production processes, and it can move across multiple environments without distinction.
LiberateDeveloper productivity. The main purpose of using containers is to use microservices architecture to change applications. Developers focus on the development of current business services without worrying about language dependency libraries.
Efficient operation. Because the container is based on the virtual isolation technology of the native Linux kernel, the container running and the native process consume resources basically the same. Containers allow users to easily run multiple container images in a system, which is the same as running multiple processes in a system. Users can also create container images, use them as the basis of other images, and use the onion file system to enable large application migration and deployment to reach the second level.
Version control. The operations team can create a basic image that includes the operating system, configuration, and various tools and utilities needed. The development team can build different versions of its service image based on the basic image, which is conducive to the use of a unified configuration environment from development and testing to production.
In the microservice In development, the purpose of using containers is to manage the microservice architecture. So a new key question arises: how to arrange the scheduling of the container of the packaging service? The technical community gradually shifted its focus to “container orchestration.” Using IaaS analogy to the concept of container orchestration is similar to the role of IaaS Hypervisor, except that the location is on the OS (or guest OS). The main function is to manage and schedule the container to run on multiple OSs. The focus is on the governance of microservices. .
The current container Orchestration engines include Swarm, Mesos, Cattle, Kubernetes, etc., with Kubernetes as the mainstream. Kubernetes uses containers as the granularity of microservice applications, and automatically orchestrates and allocates them to the underlying computing resources according to certain constraints, so as to achieve full utilization of computing resources in different scenarios.
With microservices Based on the advantages of containers and container orchestration technology, it is possible to use container technology to realize a new generation of PaaS platform. In the future, it will mainly advance in the following directions:
Reduce complexity. The current Kubernetes container platform is a bit complicated, and users need to spend a lot of learning costs for the first use. Many functional users can’t even know how to use it. It should be simplistic.
Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. Because of the use of containers, companies can put applications from internal test environments to run across multiple platforms. This kind of mixed use scenarios will increase in the future, and how to schedule container services more safely and quickly has become the focus of container technology research.
Continuous integration and deployment of applications. Using container technology and microservice architecture, the purpose is to achieve continuous integration and deployment based on agile, and to produce service applications like a pipeline. In the future, how to simply implement this set of concepts according to different needs has become a problem that must be solved.
Yunhong New Generation WinGarden container cloud platform is an enterprise-level container management platform for managing multiple kubernetes. It is a safe, stable, easy-to-manage and operation and maintenance lightweight container cloud platform specifically designed for enterprise-level customers, providing enterprises with a true cloud-native application management architecture , To help enterprises build elastic, scalable, fast iterative and flexible and agile application architecture.
Yunhong WinGarden container The cloud platform combines the technical advantages of the Yunhong IaaS platform, and has made many innovations for the PaaS platform in the private cloud field. There are successful deployment cases in banks, aviation and other industries. In the future, Yunhong will continue to build a container cloud platform and create more valuable container cloud products.