What is Docker(Docker Uses)

Docker is a containerization platform that packages your application and its dependencies together in the form of a docker container to confirm that your application works flawlessly in any environment.

In simple word, it is a tool designed to make it easier, to create, deploy, and run an application by using containers. It is also a company that promotes and expand this technology, working in collaboration with the cloud, windows vendors and Linux, including Microsoft.

Containers allow a developer to package up an application, with all of the parts it needs like libraries and other dependencies and ship it all out as one package.

For this work, thanks to the container, the developer can be assured that the application will run on any other Linux machine disregarding of any customized setting. The machine used for writing and testing the code might have that could differ from other machines.

Docker container

Docker container is a standard unit of software that packages up the code and all its dependencies. Which help the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another.

A Docker container image is a lightweight, executable package, standalone of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, system tools, runtime, system libraries, and settings.

From an operating system point of view, a container could be an Ubuntu container, CentOs container, etc to full-fill the requirement. Also, it could be an application-oriented container like Tomcat-Ubuntu container or a CakePHP container etc.

Docker: Top benefits

Return on investment & cost savings:

The first important benefit of using docker is ROI (Return On Investment). the biggest driver of many management decisions, when selecting a new product is the return on investment.

The more a solution can drive down costs while raising profits, the better the solution is, especially for large, and the established companies, that need to generate steady revenue in the long term.

Docker can help simplify this type of savings by dramatically reducing infrastructure resources. The useful nature of Docker is that fewer resources are necessary to run the same application. Due to the reduced infrastructure requirements because of Docker, organization are able to save on everything from server costs to the employees that needed to maintain them.

Standardization & productivity

One of the biggest benefits of using a Docker-based architecture is actually standardization. Dockers provide repeatable development, test, build, and production environments. Standardizing service infrastructure across the entire pipeline grant every team member to work on a production parity environment.

By doing this, engineers are equipped to efficiently analyze and fix bugs within the application. That help to reduces the amount of time wasted on defects and increases the amount of time available for feature development.

CI efficiency

It enables you to build a container image and use that image across every step of the deployment process. To separate non-dependent steps and run them in parallel is the huge benefit of this ability.

Compatibility and Maintainability

One of the benefits is that the entire team will appreciate is parity.  Parity, in terms of Docker, means that your images run the same no matter whose laptop and which server they are running on.

For your developers, this means less time spent setting up environments, environment-specific issues, debugging, and a more portable and easy-to-set-up codebase. Parity also means that your production infrastructure will be more reliable and easier to maintain.

Continuous Deployment & Testing

Docker establishes consistent environments from development to production. Its containers are configured to maintain all configurations and stability internally. So, you can use the same container from development to production making sure there are no difference or manual intervention.

If you need to change or any upgrade during a product’s release cycle, you can easily make the necessary changes to Docker containers, test them, and appliance the same changes to your existing containers. This sort of flexibility is another important advantage of using Docker.

Multi-Cloud Platforms

It is also one of the greatest benefits of docker. All major cloud computing providers, including  Google Compute Platform (GCP), and  Amazon Web Services (AWS) have embraced Docker’s availability and added individual support.

Docker containers can be run inside an Amazon EC2 instance, Rackspace server or VirtualBoxGoogle, Compute Engine instance, provided that the host OS supports Docker.

Docker works very well with other providers like OpenStack and Microsoft Azure and can be used with various configuration managers like Chef, Ansible, and Puppet, etc.

Simplicity & faster configurations

The key benefits of Docker are the way it simplifies matters. Users can take their own configuration, put it into the code and deploy it without any kind of problems. It can be used in a wide variety of environments, the requirements of the infrastructure are no longer linked with the environment of the application.

Rapid Deployment

To reduce the deployment process to seconds Dockers manages very well. This is due to its amazing feature that it creates a container for every process and does not boot an OS. Data can be created and destroyed without taking any pressure about the cost to bring it up again because it would be affordable.

Isolation

Docker ensures your resources and application are isolated and segregated. It helps to make sure each container has its own resources and that are isolated from other containers.

you can separate applications running completely different stacks with the help of various container. Docker ensures you to remove clean app since each application runs on its own container. If you don’t need an application longer then you can simply delete its container.

Docker also ensures that each application only uses that resources which have been assigned to them. A distinct application won’t use all of your available resources, which would normally lead to performance degradation or complete downtime for other applications.

Scalability

Containers are much easier than virtual machines to scale. Because they are neatly packaged lightweight pieces of the application that can have various parts spun up and load balanced as required.

You can also have shipped container quickly between different host environments in the event of a hardware failure or increased load. On the other hand, traditional web or migrating virtual machines or application servers is a much more complex and intensive process.

Conclusion:

Docker is a very useful tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run an application by using containers. And Docker container is a standardized unit which can be created on the fly to deploy a particular application or environment. Its benefits are described above.