IT containerization is changing application development

The principle of IT containerization

This is a type of virtualization used at the application level. The principle is based on the creation of several user spaces isolated from each other on a common core. The term “container” is then used to designate such an instance. This separation is based on a concept similar to that of partitioned application modules, communicating through web services and applications.

The containers, although independent, share a common kernel (thus one or more operating systems) and the same memory space. Moreover – another interesting advantage for all application developers – they host a standard and common universe containing the code, the execution environment, the parameterization, the network file systems and other libraries necessary for their proper functioning.

The essential orchestrators

The provisioning and management of these containers stored on public clouds is handled by a container orchestrator, also capable of running
load-balancing
automatic. Among the orchestrators,
Kubernetes
is undoubtedly one of the most powerful orchestrators today.

Developed from several open source projects, this solution is supported by a large and particularly active community that contributes to its constant improvement. It is this model that has, for example, solved the server failures that were a problem for less advanced technologies, such as virtual machines.

What are the benefits of IT containerization?

This concept greatly facilitates and accelerates the development of applications. Thus, it is no longer necessary to take into account the dependencies of a program, thus simplifying its evolution and the management of its versions. Applications are also no longer directly impacted by changing environments. Maintenance operations will also benefit from containerization. The deployment of updates and patches will only have to be done once since the operating system kernel is now common.

Containers are lightweight objects, allowing them to occupy less disk space and to start up instantly or almost instantly. Very elastic, they adapt according to the demand they receive. If it decreases, the container will free up resource that will be made available to other containers. This dynamic server management contributes strongly and effectively to improving the application performance of each container. A similar operation is impossible with traditional virtualization.

Scalability and scalability management is the main advantage of Kubernetes. To illustrate with an example: if you have a website based on an application server with a classic VM (virtual machine) architecture with a load balancer, to handle a peak of users, you need to add a new VM with this same application server installed. Now with Kubernetes, it can automatically add a new machine without worrying about the OS or software. This part is managed at the container level.

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