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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?

#71

Post by mcguire »

istvan__ wrote: post #59

One business use case is to stop threads between the Ops and the Dev team about missing JAR files on a production system. If Docker was fixing this only, I would still use it. There is nothing better than a single binary deployment that is byte to byte the same as it was running on a dev laptop and a QA env.

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.)

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

#72

Post by mrbig4545 »

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 of it and replace it with a systemd-nspawn container, because there's less handwaving involved and I can get it to work correctly.

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

#73

Post by phunkystuff »

Here's a really simple example of a project that I had set up using docker.

For my website I have it set up with continuous integration to run my tests when I merge into master and build a docker image which it then pushes to the docker registry. I then have it ssh into my host server, pull that image, then run the new container and remove the old one.

Boom, i've just deployed my website by simply merging a PR into my master!

This is just a simple use case, and I probably wouldn't suggest deploying a production ready site like this, but it's really cool! It's really simple to just pass around images and have things up and running on local dev's too

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

#74

Post by msravi »

MalcolmDiggs wrote: post #66

In my experience, if you start hearing: "I don't know what's wrong, it works fine on my localhost!" a lot, then it may be time to think about Docker. In more general terms: more the complex the environment, the more moving pieces, the more developers on the team, the more servers in production, the more likely there's going be a discrepancy between what Developer-A has running on his machine, and what Developer-B has…

How is this different from sharing a plain old VM image and doing the same thing? Is there any particular advantage that a Docker image brings?

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

#75

Post by istvan__ »

mcguire wrote: post #71
istvan__ wrote: post #59

One business use case is to stop threads between the Ops and the Dev team about missing JAR files on a production system. If Docker was fixing this only, I would still use it. There is nothing better than a single binary deployment that is byte to byte the same as it was running on a dev laptop and a QA env.

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.

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

#76

Post by towelguy »

b00gizm wrote: post #16

I absolutely love it (Docker + docker-compose) for creating homogenous local development environments. And if your app needs a MongoDB, Elasticsearch or anything else, it's as easy as adding one line to your overall docker-compose config file to link those services to your app. No need to pollute your development machine, you can just have anything running in Docker containers and share them across your team. I've cr…

I love docker-compose, it is to services what npm is to packages.

That said, I'm only using it in development. For production there's so many options I don't even know where to begin: http://stackoverflow.com/a/18287169/3557327

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

#77

Post by marcusandre »

MalcolmDiggs wrote: post #66

In my experience, if you start hearing: "I don't know what's wrong, it works fine on my localhost!" a lot, then it may be time to think about Docker. In more general terms: more the complex the environment, the more moving pieces, the more developers on the team, the more servers in production, the more likely there's going be a discrepancy between what Developer-A has running on his machine, and what Developer-B has…

This seems pretty fine but it's not a Docker-specific argument. The same arguments fits for a Vagrant-Workflow.

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

#78

Post by thwest »

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 a half dozen to few dozen services from the same machine.

One thing I don't like aesthetically is the tendency to expose local folders to the container. I prefer complete encapsulation.

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

#79

Post by mrbig4545 »

phunkystuff wrote: post #73

Here's a really simple example of a project that I had set up using docker. For my website I have it set up with continuous integration to run my tests when I merge into master and build a docker image which it then pushes to the docker registry. I then have it ssh into my host server, pull that image, then run the new container and remove the old one. Boom, i've just deployed my website by simply merging a PR into m…

This is not something that is unique to docker though. I could just as easily set up a hook to deploy our site without docker, but it's not something I need.

I prefer to manually deploy, it's only one command, and I can make sure it's all worked correctly.

That said, I will be moving that command to a chat command, as I like that. But even then, it'll be a manually triggered command.

I have auto deploy setup for CI testing, as in that case I do want to know that those branches are ready for deployment to prod, when I want to.

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

#80

Post by boomzilla »

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.

Not sure why you still have this problem. In Java world, Maven build system solved this long, long time ago. There is even a plug-in that builds a uber jar that can be invoked with JVM as the only dependency.
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