By Joe Kim, SolarWinds Chief Technology Officer


With container adoption on the rise, I wanted to share a blog written in 2016 by my SolarWinds colleague, Kong Yang.


While the initial inroads are primarily still in the education phase, container technology has started making its way into federal IT networks, and the appeal is clear. Container-based technology provides value specifically in the areas of efficiency, optimization, and security, particularly as networks grow. This combination is uniquely suited to meet government IT needs.


Before an agency dips its toes into container technology, it’s vital for federal IT pros to gain an understanding of exactly what containers are, and what benefits they can bring.


What are Containers?


Container technology is far less complex than it sounds. Containers wrap a piece of software in a complete file system that contains everything the software needs to run, including code, run time, system tools, and libraries. Containers guarantee that the software will always run the same, regardless of the compute environment.


Let’s say you’re building an application that handles online transactions. The user experience consists of logging in, clicking on an item to add it to the cart, walking through the checkout process, and finally submitting to complete the transaction. With containers, you can isolate these services into loosely coupled services, aka microservices, across multiple containers. The advantage of doing it this way is that if the microservices fail, they will not take down the application.


In fact, a failure of a container or a system running containers will result in those services spinning up on other systems to get the work done. With non-container technology, there’s a good chance a tiered application is running on one or multiple systems to take care of that entire transaction. A failure that occurs on a tier or in a system will result in a degraded application or potential downtime as that tier restarts or fails over.


With container technology, however, each piece is separated out into its own tiny package. The login, for example, may be one container. Adding something to your cart may be another container, and so on. It’s like a distributed assembly line. Each container is responsible for its own small, unique task, which it does expertly, as opposed to one large monolithic application tier that’s responsible for many, often vastly different tasks, and carries much overhead.


How Can I Get Started Using Containers?


As with any new technology, the first thing to do is become familiar with that technology by learning about it. Because containers are typically open source, there is a wealth of publically available information and source materials that can be used for education and replication. and are great places to start.


The next step is to ramp up on skill sets. IT teams should dedicate some resources and time and start building experience around containers and microservices. Spend time testing to understand where these services might be implemented throughout the agency to increase efficiency. Again, Docker® provides installable platforms, such as Docker for Mac®, Linux®, and Windows® that you can leverage to level up your container experience.


Once there is a baseline understanding of containers, how they work, and how they can be used, apply that to your own environment and start mapping out a strategy for implementation.


Find the full article on Federal Technology Insider.