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Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

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Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#31

Post by yapcguy »

tenfourty wrote: post #22
gabrtv wrote: post #20

Contrary to what you might think, those of us working on http://deis.io/ are excited by the Red Hat / Docker partnership and its implications on interoperability. Why? Because there will never be a one-size-fits-all PaaS. Deis happens to be built around Chef with a workflow deeply inspired by Heroku. We believe strongly in that approach. Other PaaS's are working with more experimental technologies like CoreOS and etc…

I absolutely agree with you, Docker is where the community seems to be converging for standardisation around linux containers. This is a great first step towards application portability from physical, virtual and PaaS. Now it will be interesting to see who/what will win when it comes to the cartridge/buildpack side of things.

Is it really where the "community" are converging?

Docker is well-known because DotCloud is pushing it, so there's money for marketing and hype.

Docker is an attempt to make DotCloud relevant.

Docker will live on as an open-source project, but if it doesn't gain traction fast enough for DotCloud to sell its services or raise extra funding, DotCloud will die.

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#32

Post by tenfourty »

yapcguy wrote: post #31
tenfourty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree with you, Docker is where the community seems to be converging for standardisation around linux containers. This is a great first step towards application portability from physical, virtual and PaaS. Now it will be interesting to see who/what will win when it comes to the cartridge/buildpack side of things.

Is it really where the "community" are converging? Docker is well-known because DotCloud is pushing it, so there's money for marketing and hype. Docker is an attempt to make DotCloud relevant. Docker will live on as an open-source project, but if it doesn't gain traction fast enough for DotCloud to sell its services or raise extra funding, DotCloud will die.

I'd say this is a very negative comment because you are purely criticising without proposing where the community is actually going in your point of view. It might be more constructive to give your opinion on where containers should go if not Docker. I agree with you that this has been a pivot by dotCloud, but my hat goes off to them for it and I totally respect them as a startup for doing it!

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#34

Post by tenfourty »

peterwwillis wrote: post #29

> with Docker as a standard you will have a fully portable application that behaves exactly the same on one PaaS as it doesn’t on another I wish this lie would go away. You have plenty of dependencies with a Docker app and it's trivial to either be missing them or have conflicting ones. Go ahead and copy some binaries from one random Linux distro three years ago to one made today and see if they work every time; not…

A few thoughts on this, firstly you are right to an extent - Docker doesn't give you portability completely due to binary dependencies, but if for example I wanted to move my app from the same major version of CentOS or RHEL on a virtual machine to something running with the same major version in the cloud it should be relatively straightforward. You are right though that this won't work going from something like Ubuntu to Suse for example.

LXC currently has a gaping hole around security because it doesn't use SELinux - you might want to read this article: http://mattoncloud.org/2012/07/16/are-lxc-containers-enough/

The key bit is that we are starting to converge on a standard container for the Linux OS and with Red Hat working to get things working with SELinux we should have a pretty awesome container for our apps.

Finally, Docker adds a lot more on top of LXC, which is why people love it so much - you can see a comprehensive answer by Solomon Hykes here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17989306/what-does-docker...

Given the above I'd rather standardise on an Open project that adds a lot more value to LXC and hides that complexity away and given the largest linux vendor is putting it's weight behind this I'd say this is rather awesome!

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#35

Post by tenfourty »

ilaksh wrote: post #33

Lol. Still a lot of people who think that Red Hat derivatives are the only "enterprise-grade" server distros. Ubuntu and Debian work great.

I guess the point here is that Enterprise Linux represents a significant share of the market and if Docker doesn't work on it then it can hardly be a standard. With Red Hat behind this project it's a significant boost to Docker becoming a standard around Linux containers. Does that make sense?

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#36

Post by peterwwillis »

tenfourty wrote: post #34
peterwwillis wrote: post #29

> with Docker as a standard you will have a fully portable application that behaves exactly the same on one PaaS as it doesn’t on another I wish this lie would go away. You have plenty of dependencies with a Docker app and it's trivial to either be missing them or have conflicting ones. Go ahead and copy some binaries from one random Linux distro three years ago to one made today and see if they work every time; not…

A few thoughts on this, firstly you are right to an extent - Docker doesn't give you portability completely due to binary dependencies, but if for example I wanted to move my app from the same major version of CentOS or RHEL on a virtual machine to something running with the same major version in the cloud it should be relatively straightforward. You are right though that this won't work going from something like Ubu…

Who says LXC doesn't support SELinux?

https://github.com/lxc/lxc/blob/99282c429a23a2ffa699ca149bb7...

      SELinux context
      
  If lxc was compiled and installed with SELinux support, and the host
  system has SELinux enabled, then the SELinux context under which the
  container should be run can be specified in the container
  configuration. The default is unconfined_t,
  which means that lxc will not attempt to change contexts.
IBM guide for SELinux-protected containers: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-lxc-security/#N1...

Additionally, LXC is "Open" since it is GPL2, it has been around since before 2006 so it's as much a de-facto standard as you can get, it's already supported by multiple other projects and distros, and it doesn't lock you into "the Docker way" of doing things - you get to choose how you implement it. It's flexible, lightweight, simple, and stable. Docker will work for many use cases, but LXC will work for all of them. It's lynx vs wget, basically.

The libvirt-sandbox project looks like a nice way to manage sandboxed selinux-supported lxc instances that you can convert to qemu/kvm depending on your needs.

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#37

Post by nickstinemates »

drdaeman wrote: post #25

They're removing dependency on AuFS because it's not enterprisey enough, but if compared to Docker (which, in my personal opinion, is very immature and lacks almost everything you'd expect from the container virtualization management tool except for the basic features, although there are, indeed, some workarounds for some cases) AuFS is granddad-level mature.

AUFS is what runs the dotCloud platform. The reality is AUFS is pretty amazing, and used in production, and stable and mature as you say.

But, having to require a patched kernel is a huge barrier for adoption.

AUFS will return as soon as possible as an option. It will just long term not be the default option.

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#38

Post by alex4nder »

tenfourty wrote: post #32
yapcguy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really where the "community" are converging? Docker is well-known because DotCloud is pushing it, so there's money for marketing and hype. Docker is an attempt to make DotCloud relevant. Docker will live on as an open-source project, but if it doesn't gain traction fast enough for DotCloud to sell its services or raise extra funding, DotCloud will die.

I'd say this is a very negative comment because you are purely criticising without proposing where the community is actually going in your point of view. It might be more constructive to give your opinion on where containers should go if not Docker. I agree with you that this has been a pivot by dotCloud, but my hat goes off to them for it and I totally respect them as a startup for doing it!

Hopefully the community will continue moving forward by getting actual work done. These technologies are all cute, but nothing here, except the scale of marketing, is groundbreaking.

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#39

Post by shykes »

peterwwillis wrote: post #29

> with Docker as a standard you will have a fully portable application that behaves exactly the same on one PaaS as it doesn’t on another I wish this lie would go away. You have plenty of dependencies with a Docker app and it's trivial to either be missing them or have conflicting ones. Go ahead and copy some binaries from one random Linux distro three years ago to one made today and see if they work every time; not…

Hi,

Evidently you don't feel the need for Docker and don't believe it's useful of needed, which is of course totally fine. I won't try to convince you since I've tried before and failed :) (if other are interested I cover some of the differences between docker and lxc here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17989306/what-does-docker...)

However there are obviously people who disagree with you and find that Docker solves a real problem beyond what lxc can do. This seems to irritate you, to the point of "bullying" every thread about docker on hacker news. Why? Is it not a good thing that we toolmakers try new ways to solve a problem? If docker doesn't do a good job, people will stop using it, and the project will fail. It's really that simple. Why not let people make up their own minds instead of going on a crusade against a project?

Re: Docker + Red Hat OpenShift = The Tipping Point for Open PaaS?

#40

Post by dreamfactory »

ilaksh wrote: post #33

Lol. Still a lot of people who think that Red Hat derivatives are the only "enterprise-grade" server distros. Ubuntu and Debian work great.

Many enterprises will only use RHEL (tooling, support, market maturity etc), hence 'enterprise-grade'.
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