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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?

#111

Post by trustfundbaby »

Mostly answered already, but another use case is getting engineers up to speed on environments that they're not familiar with. For example, I work a lot with Rails apps, and sometimes we'll need a dev to come in and work some css/html magic or something like that. Well getting them setup with rvm, ruby, rails, bundler, mysql, elasticsearch and working through compilation errors on OSX can be a real nightmare, especially if you set up your env 2 years ago and have just been updating it incrementally since.

When we dockerize the app, they can be setup with the docker image and ready to go in under an hour, without having to screw with their system ... much.

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

#112

Post by mdaniel »

pekk wrote: post #97
justizin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is also a use case for not developing on OS X, which doesn't have anything to do with production anyway.

Can you clarify? Do you mean that one should only develop upon the platform that will be used in production?

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

#113

Post by mdaniel »

thwest wrote: post #78
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…

My current workflow is similarly VM oriented and I've just started playing with docker, so an experienced user can feel free to chime in. Docker is more about process isolation using LXC than having a whole VM for a particular app. You still need some operating system underneath your docker deploys, so it feels redundant in a world where I already have a VM for each project. However I could see it shining at hosting…

Docker doesn't expose local folders to the container unless you specifically and verbosely instruct it to do so. Unless you're thinking of the ADD and COPY instructions, which are entirely optional (or you can, IIRC, use ADD with a URL).

If you are referring to docker-machine (née boot2docker) sharing your home directory into the VirtualBox, that's a necessity brought on by the fact that you are not developing on Linux and Docker is (currently) Linux only, so something has to give in that relationship. It is, IIRC, also more-or-less optional, with the tremendous downside that you must scp/rsync your workspace into VirtualBox by hand, before ssh-ing in to execute `docker build`.

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

#114

Post by purans »

For my project, I wanted to have an automated and easy code to deployment setup, so here's what I have it working Bitbucket -> Private Docker Repository -> Tutum (https://www.tutum.co/) - Live app

It's working pretty well. Once you check in your code, docker repository hooked to bitbucket will build the docker image and then you can start deployment from Tutum with one click.

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

#115

Post by muralimadhu »

We have been using docker for about a year at Demandforce, Intuit. We have had a mostly positive experience with it.

Plusses:

- Dont see any environment related issues because the docker image is the same in every environment

- Easy onboarding to teams that use docker because you dont need to setup anything new. This is especially useful if your company encourages developers to work across teams

- Ops can build around infrastructure around this and be sure that every team builds and runs code in the same way

- If your application is complex, using docker-compose, its extremely simple to setup your dev environment

- The community is moving towards docker, and it doesnt hurt your resume if you have production docker experience

Minuses:

- For an extremely simple application (that you think will remain simple over its lifetime), it might be more overhead to use docker than not use it

- Even though we’ve been using boot2docker and vagrant to setup docker on MacOSX, it hasnt worked seamlessly. When you get on and off a vpn for example, boot2docker has constantly messed things up. If you can get your dev setup right, docker works well. If not, it can be a pain sometimes on OSX

- Although its easy to build docker images for most of the open source software out there (if docker images dont already exist), it can be a pain to do that for enterprise software. Try using docker with oracle db. You might get it to work. You wont have fun with it !!

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

#116

Post by istvan__ »

karlmdavis wrote: post #109
istvan__ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh boy, if I could publish all of the things I went through. I was hoping too, until I have been in several companies, I have experienced with several developers and that was the time when I started to think, this is not an isolated problem but rather the average.

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

#117

Post by nogox »

takeda wrote: post #23
osipov wrote: post #3

There are many ways of using Docker and obviously different companies could come up with their own business cases for adopting the technology. So let me focus on one scenario and we can talk about whether it makes sense for your environment. Software engineering is often difficult because programmers have to deal with inconsistent environments for development and for production execution of their products. Due to mis…

Great, but what are the benefits of running Docker in AWS? You are still running VMs and you are being charged for running them. With Docker you are simply putting yet another layer of complexity, because now you have to run more beefier VMs, you now have problem with network communication between containers running on different hosts. So you will most likely need to use overlay network. You also decrease resiliency,…

Check out https://medium.com/@hyperhq/docker-hyper-and-the-end-of-gues...

I think this is the way Container-as-a-Service to go, instead of the current form of AWS ECS.

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

#118

Post by kasia66 »

Hi, You can have a look at Cloud 66 (http://www.cloud66.com/how-it-works) a full stack container management as a service in production. Cloud 66 uses Docker technology and integrates 11 open sources tools to cover end to end stack deployment on any cloud provider or on your own server, within one click.

You can compare different Docker solutions (http://www.cloud66.com/compare) and read how Cloud 66 used Docker.(http://blog.cloud66.com/docker-in-production-from-a-to-z/). (disclaimer: I do work at Cloud 66 )

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

#119

Post by mrbig4545 »

ecliptik wrote: post #103
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.

Sure, this is the one I used, with private internet access.com , https://github.com/jbogatay/docker-piavpn

I'm sure you could easily change it to work with other VPN providers

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