Billions wasted on Hadoop startups, the same will eventually be true of Docker

Again, most people don't need to build their own cloud platform.

Being able to reuse Docker files is nice, you've reinvented CFengine for the eighth time. That's great.

The point is Docker is yet another standard way to build boxes and contain them. Serverless / FaaS platforms obviate that need.

* obviously an isolated kernel is better than a shared one, but the point of this post (and this comment) is that Docker vs VM vs MicroVMs vs zones etc is irrelevant for companies who are not cloud providers

It does isolate a process's view of the filesystem, it does isolate a process's view of the PID namespace, and that is valuable. Let's say it's a spectrum:

raw processes -------- processes with a certain user ---------- namespace+cgroup isolated processes ---------------- VMs

Docker is certainly an improvement for processes that you don't want running completely contained but want somewhat isolated. For isolation in every sense, you want a VM (a lightweight one if you can get it, i.e. some stripped down qemu).

> MicroVMs start faster and provide better isolation.

Agreed on isolation -- VMs are hands down better at isolating, but I'm a bit skeptical about starting faster.

> Meanwhile, none of this is relevant unless you're building your own cloud platform, which is a huge waste of time for most companies.

Again, this is exactly why it's relevant, 99% of people aren't building their own cloud platform, so they don't need the full isolation of VMs -- most of the time they're just trying to prevent program A that their devs wrote from clobbering program B that their devs also wrote when they both run on the same machine, and making it easier to deploy the dependencies that come with each.

> MicroVMs, containers, VMs, zones and bare metal are places to execute code. Serverless makes all those distinctions irrelevant.

OK I don't even really know what this means, you know serverless runs on MicroVMs right? and most of the time it's actually containers in MicroVMs? MicroVMs are just stripped down versions of regular VMs, and no one is in a zone unless they're running Solaris.

The distinction between these things is still very important, unless you mean that the future is everyone just deploying functions for their applications? But even if you mean that, cold start is basically the first stumbling block you see and it literally exists because of the distinction between how these technologies work (and how fast they can be started on demand, with how much isolation).

> Sorry if you spent 2015 getting really into Docker. You bet on the wrong horse. It's OK, this happens in tech.

Is there anyone that spent 2015 really getting into Docker and isn't better for it now? The technologies that have sprung out of this part of computing are very valuable to know and are getting more valuable, not less. You don't have to install a VM to run an isolated postgres instance on your dev machine because containerization exists -- if you're still doing this you should probably look into updating your tooling.

Also, don't forget that containerization is how some of the richest and supposedly best (due to their ability to spend money on engineers) companies in the world have been handling deployment for nearly a decade -- 2015 is late for realizing containerization is a good thing, not early.

My point was that Docker purports to solve the sandboxing and security problems.

In reality, this is something that 90% of people who use Docker don't give a shit about. For the vast majority Docker is just a nice and easy-to-use packaging format.

The sad part is that

a) Docker failed at security.

b) In trying to solve the security problem Docker ended up with a pretty crufty (from a technical point of view) packaging format.

Maybe we need to start from scratch, listen to the devs this time and build something they actually want.

Indeed. And since we're not building our own cloud environment, because that's a waste of resources for most companies, we will share an environment with possibly malicious code so therefore need isolation.

> unless you mean that the future is everyone just deploying functions for their applications?

Yes, that is exactly what I mean.

> You know serverless runs on MicroVMs right?

Yes, that's why I mentioned them

> and most of the time it's actually containers in MicroVMs?

I doubt this - AWSs performance documentation focuses on MicroVMs as an alternative to containers, not an addition. Which makes sense as containers do less than MicroVMs.

But hey, even if the AWS MicroVM documentation is wrong, it doesn't matter. I am not building a cloud platform. I do not care.

You're right about spin up time. Open a socket and let your apps terminate with it open for a greater chance of reuse. As a FaaS user that's your entire concern with your execution environment.

> 99% of people aren't building their own cloud platform, so they don't need the full isolation of VMs

All cloud environments must provide isolation between customers, hence VMs / MicroVMs. Customers adding docker on top of that add a huge administrative overhead that duplicates the features of their cloud provider for littl benefit,

> Is there anyone that spent 2015 really getting into Docker and isn't better for it now?

Every single person whose product is not Internet infrastructure, that wrote or configured their own unnecessary custom LXC or Docker and VM environment because 'Docker changes everything'.

If a company's product is machine learning for detecting cancer and their ops person has a custom Docker/kubernetes environment they're misusing their employer for their own technical interest

>2015 is late for realizing containerization is a good thing, not early.

It is indeed. It's just that then Docker hype was at its maximum.