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Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

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Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#101

Post by mercanator »

In our organization we have seen tremendous value using docker for our CI server (bamboo) and for infrastructure deployment. On the CI server side of things.... Our CI server a.k.a the "host machine" in docker speak has a MySQL database that we did not want used by all of our builds and wanted to isolate the creation of our application from the ground up within using its own MySQL instance. Additionally there is a lot of other peripheral software that we did not want to install on our host machine but it was critical for our unit tests to run. This is where docker is valuable to us from a build perspective. It allows us to isolate the application for unit testing and not get caught up with the possibility of other running software on the same machine affecting the builds, therefore freeing us up from debugging, and therefore saving the company money because developers are not wasting time debugging CI server issues. It's easy to isolate CI server related issues from the docker container running the unit tests because a developer can just run the same tests using the container on their local machine, so it creates a consistent environment.

On the infrastructure deployment side of things.... Previous to our "dockerized" infrastructure we were managing about 7 different AMI's for all our servers and it was becoming a pain in the butt to manage the installation of new software if our application called for it, create a new AMI, then re-deploy said AMI. If you have experience with AWS and you have done this enough times, I'm sure you have faced at one point or another long wait times for your AMI to be created before you can re-deploy with that newly created AMI. This is time wasted on the application deployment side of things, but also on the personnel side of things while you wait for that damn thing to be created so you can re-deploy. Time is money and money waiting for resources to be available or for AMI's to be created is money taken away from the business. Additionally though in its infancy stage, we are using docker-compose (https://docs.docker.com/compose/) which offers some really nice ways of defining your container infrastructure within a single machine, I highly recommend looking into this for further efficiency.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#102

Post by nickstinemates »

osipov wrote: post #51
collyw wrote: post #20

To tell all the cool kids you are using it. (Ok, I know there are real use cases for Docker, but I see a lot of hype as well. People telling my mathematician friend that she needs to use docker at the start of her project - it is likely to be a one off graph she needs to produce for a research paper).

There is a big push for reproducibility in science. If you friend can package the process for building that graph in a Dockerfile, it is more likely that readers of her paper will be able to reproduce her results.

This is an area where a lot of companies are focusing in terms of data science.

As you noted, reproducibility is a huge issue in the scientific community (according to docker users/vendors I've spoke to) to the extent that there are a number of funded startups trying to solve this problem (some using Docker.)

What has been also very surprising is the big companies who have read only copies of analytic data they want to run computations on - sandboxing the data scientists scripts in a container has helped them tremendously in terms of supporting the execution.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#103

Post by ecliptik »

mrbig4545 wrote: post #72

I never figured it out, we could do everything we need in production with LXC, puppet, carton and perlbrew. Combined with a vagrant box for dev, we have no issues. Although I do use docker to run deluge in a container with openvpn on my home pc, but only because someone else had gone to the trouble of writing the dockerfile and getting it to work. It seems to break a lot though, when I have time I'm going to get rid…

Could you post a link to the Dockerfile for the deluge/openvpn container?

I have a VM setup with transmission/openvpn since I was having issues getting the VPN to work with Docker's networking and it was just easier to use a standard VM instead.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#104

Post by nickstinemates »

mrbig4545 wrote: post #72

I never figured it out, we could do everything we need in production with LXC, puppet, carton and perlbrew. Combined with a vagrant box for dev, we have no issues. Although I do use docker to run deluge in a container with openvpn on my home pc, but only because someone else had gone to the trouble of writing the dockerfile and getting it to work. It seems to break a lot though, when I have time I'm going to get rid…

> Although I do use docker to run deluge in a container with openvpn on my home pc, but only because someone else had gone to the trouble of writing the dockerfile and getting it to work.

That's actually pretty cool.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#105

Post by nickstinemates »

ccozan wrote: post #95
Matt3o12_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker images use the union file system. That means when a new version of that image is available, you often only pull a few megabytes from the hub because it already has the OS. A docker container is also way more lightweight. Instead of running a full OS, you I only run one process. So your docker image starts within seconds

Is this more like a Solaris zone or a Linux chroot-ed env?

A lot like Linux chroot, with some additional features, restrictions, and a mechanism to share them easily.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#106

Post by nickstinemates »

notwedtm wrote: post #67
osipov wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what are the benefits of running Docker in AWS? I don't see benefits to running Docker in AWS. In my opinion, AWS implemented its Docker-based Container Service very poorly. I advise my customers against using AWS when want to use Docker. There are many bare metal as a service providers out in the marketplace. >the argument about running the same container in dev/test/prod Is this issue really caused by Docker becau…

Can you name a few bare metal as a service providers?

Rackspace, SoftLayer/Bluemix

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#107

Post by ecliptik »

e40 wrote: post #39

Say you're running on CentOS 6.6 (or the equivalent RHEL) and you want to run some software that won't work because you need a newer library than is installed (this recently happened to me recently trying to install Transmission). You have two choices: 1. Upgrade to CentOS 7.x. 2. Use Docker and install the software into a container using a newer OS (CentOS 7.x or a newer Debian). #1 is very expensive and sometimes i…

This is our current business case. Multiple CentOS/RHEL 6 systems in a global environment and we want to run an application that requires Ubuntu and newer libraries.

Instead of spinning up new VMs in each environment for one new application, we can instead run a Ubuntu container with the application within the existing environment. This brings with it all the other benefits such as continuous delivery and orchestration that we didn't have before.

Once the platform is established there is no limit what we can run within a repeatable and consistent environment.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#108

Post by ecliptik »

fu86 wrote: post #17

We have a shitload of servers running CentOS for historical reasons. We can't change the distribution because all the services running on this servers are tight to the quirks and special cases of this distribution. So we need to live with CentOS. Some of our newer services need a up to date version of glibc and a lot of other dependencies CentOS can't provide. So we use docker to boot up Ubuntu 14.04 containers and r…

This is what we do. Existing stable CentOS/RHEL environment that we can deploy other OS containers to (specifically Ubuntu 14.04) without having to stand up entire new VMs or metal.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#109

Post by karlmdavis »

istvan__ wrote: post #75
mcguire wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean like a war file? (Yes, I'm being hyperbolic, unless you want to have your entire application running from a servlet container with nothing in front of it. And I agree, a single deployment object is just about the only way to keep your sanity. But still, this isn't the first thing that's proclaimed that advantage.)

No, I do not mean like a war file. I am talking about an average Java developer who does not understand how classpath works, how environment works and what are the assumption that is built in to the code and blames everything on other people . For a long time they could get away with this, post-Docker world they cannot.

Is that really where we're at? That an "average Java developer" doesn't understand the classpath or environment?

I've certainly worked with a lot of folks who didn't, but I guess I've just always hoped that experience was unique to me.

Re: Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it?

#110

Post by trustfundbaby »

justizin wrote: post #70
lastofus wrote: post #64

Does Docker provide anything useful to someone who develops on OS X and deploys to Linux VMs (Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS)? Current setup is something like: - Develop locally (OS X) - Test deploy to local Vagrant Linux VM (provisioned by Ansible) - Deploy to staging/live Linux VM w/ Ansible (or Fabric if I'm being lazy) I've been following the Docker hype for some time now, but ever time I look into it, I couldn't fin…

You can build a docker image in a vagrant VM on OSX and deploy that exact docker image to production. If your vagrant image resembles production, it's probably fine, but there's a level of confidence to be reached from deploying the exact entire self-contained binary, shipping it through QA and staging, and eventually promoting it to production.

This should be made into an answer to the OP's question, because this is the use case that I think most people will wind up moving to docker for, if they do.
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