I know what Docker is and how it works. What are some problems that get solved better when using Docker?
Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
1–10 of 157 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#2I'd be interesting in hearing about others production use case scenarios.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#3One thing I'd like to point out are OS upgrades, security patches or generally package updates. With docker I just rebuild a new image using the latest ubuntu image (they are updated very frequently), deploy the app, test and then push the new image to production. Upgrading the host OS also is much less of a problem because far fewer packages are installed (i.e. it's just docker and the base install).
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#4Good question.
I have learnt enough about Docker to know it's not something which solves any problem I have, but finding out concrete facts about what others are actually doing with it was one of the hardest parts of the learning process.
The official Use Cases page is so heavily laden with meaningless buzzwords and so thin on actual detail that I still feel dirty just from reading it. https://docker.com/resources/usecases/
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#5One thing I'd like to point out are OS upgrades, security patches or generally package updates. With docker I just rebuild a new image using the latest ubuntu image (they are updated very frequently), deploy the app, test and then push the new image to production. Upgrading the host OS also is much less of a problem because far fewer packages are installed (i.e. it's just docker and the base install).
This still doesn't say what you are doing. You update the base image, which is presumably something every Docker user does, then you "deploy the app".
What are you deploying? How much heavy lifting is your dockerfile doing? How much of the environment do you have to setup manually? How do you supply the app its static and dynamic data? How do you make the app accessible to users? How are you handling availability if your app crashes? Is the app distributed or load balanced in any way?
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#6One thing I'd like to point out are OS upgrades, security patches or generally package updates. With docker I just rebuild a new image using the latest ubuntu image (they are updated very frequently), deploy the app, test and then push the new image to production. Upgrading the host OS also is much less of a problem because far fewer packages are installed (i.e. it's just docker and the base install).
But then you have many more docker images for different kinds of services that you all have to rebuild, no? Or do you just have one docker image?
And out of curiosity: is your testing of new images automated?
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#7At Lime Technology, we have integrated docker into our NAS offering along with virtual machines (KVM and Xen). Docker provides a way to eliminate the "installation" part of software and skip straight to running proven and tested images in any Docker environment. With Containers, our users can choose from a library of over 14,0000 Linux-based apps with ease. Docker just makes life easier.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#8I used Docker to solve a somewhat unconventional problem for a client last week. They have a Rails application that needs to be deployed in two vastly different situations:
* a Windows server, disconnected from the internet
* about 10 laptops, intermittently connected to the internet
Docker let us build the application once and deploy it in both scenarios with much less pain than the current situation, which basically consists of script to git-pull and over-the-phone instructions when dependencies like ruby or imagemagick need to be upgraded.
We run VirtualBox with a stock Ubuntu 14.04 image with docker installed from the docker-hosted deb repo. We use the Phusion passenger Ruby image[1], which bundles almost every dependency we needed along with a useful init system so we can run things like cron inside a single container along with the application. This makes container management trivial to do with simple scripts launched by non-technical end users.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#9I've used to to make an Ubuntu packaged app available on CentOS machines. The compile-from-source was a bit of a headache (lots of dependencies which also had to be compiled from source) so being able to deploy like this saved a lot of hassle.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?
#10Good question. I have learnt enough about Docker to know it's not something which solves any problem I have, but finding out concrete facts about what others are actually doing with it was one of the hardest parts of the learning process. The official Use Cases page is so heavily laden with meaningless buzzwords and so thin on actual detail that I still feel dirty just from reading it. https://docker.com/resources/us…
I asked the same question a month ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8324138
Some of the answers are interesting. I agree with you that most of the companies they mention on their page are so big that it makes you think that Docker is a thing for big companies, and not relevant to what I do.