This afternoon I’m taking an initial deep dive into Docker, no pun intended. For those not familiar: and I quote:
“Docker is an open source project to pack, ship and run any application as a lightweight container.”
Docker’s gained allot of traction since the first release in 2013 and it’s getting even more crazy. There’s been 400 million downloads of the Docker Engine. The crazy part is that 200 million downloads have happened in the last 6 months since the start of 2015. Now, the idea and concept of containers are nothing new. They’ve been around for more than a decade, even older. Docker however has been the first intuitive and well designed API or interface to build, submit, run and maintain application containers.
I find the idea of containers is really interesting. It’s one of the reasons why I like the way Apple or UNIX packages applications. Everything the app needs is in the application package. This is a stark contrast to the Microsoft world where there’s allot of middleware and bolt-ons or packages that need to be applied to make applications work, like for example .net Framework 3.x or 4.x and so on.
Moving forward I’m going to explore options as to where to host this blog. I’ve thought out different hosting platforms and using Azure or AWS. However, the more I read about Docker the more I think of what a novel way to host this blog.
While Clouduccino doesn’t generate that much traffic (yet!), I’d like to look into, and learn about, ways to streamline the site and have scaled out instances for when there will be higher load. It’s a good in production testing scenario for me to get familiar with automation processes like maybe Puppet, Chef, etc.
What has really become a focus and what’s in the forefront of my thinking of the last 12 months is that the ecosystem that drives the internet is moving at a lightning pace. I see it as we’re in the industrial revolution of the internet and over the last decade of working in IT I’ve seen a huge amount of change.
Previously I was in my own little bubble and cruising along in the left hand lane (in Australia) while the rest of the world was in the right hand lane (the “fast” lane) and motoring by.
I’ve started changing gears and really wanting to learn and move forward to keep up with the rate of improvement and innovation. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.