Last week in LinuxCon/ContainerCon Berlin, I attended a presentation by Luca Bruno of CoreOS, where he described how kubernetes, the most popular container orchestration and scheduling service, and rkt integrate. As part of the presentation, Luca delved into the rkt architecture. For those unaware - there are many, which is a major part of the problem - rkt (pronounced "rocket", as in this) is CoreOS's container management implementation. Nowadays, almost everyone who thinks containers, thinks "

Containers, the management and packaging technology for applications, are useful for many reasons: Packaging is simpler and self-contained Underlying operating system distribution becomes irrelevant Performance, therefore density, and therefore cost, is much better when working without a hypervisor layer To my mind, though, one of the most important elements in any technology is how it affects culture and incentives. For example, MVC development frameworks are helpful for many reasons, but the most important is that it encourages (and sometimes forces) a cleaner way of thinking about and building software.

What do Docker containers have to do with Web browsers? Everything. Web browsers provide easy access to the digitized collective knowledge of the human race, political rants, serious applications and even silly kittens. However, it is important to understand why browsers became so popular, and such a success. Prior to browsers, networked applications existed. Mostly, they were client-server two-tier applications, but they were quite popular in business, and many home personal computer users had such applications.

For most of us - pretty much all of us - the way we use our operating system (OS) on our laptop is not that different from how we use it on our mobile or a system administrator uses it on a server: The operating system is installed to the local disk. Changes / upgrades are performed by installing files to the same disk and then rebooting. Software is installed and/or upgraded by installing files to the same disk.

A few weeks ago, a colleague showed me a technology that was fascinating in and of itself, but the strategic ramifications are even greater. For those of you who are technically inclined, look at these links: https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/dotnet/ https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/aspnet/ https://github.com/aspnet/home These are, respectively, the Linux docker images for running Microsoft .Net and ASP.Net apps, and the open-source repository. This is quite cool technically. After all, apps compiled for platform A, especially tightly closed platforms like Microsoft, usually aren't meant to run on platform B!

A few weeks ago, "Lies, Damned Lies and Performance Tests," gave us a great example of how even a good performance test can be ruined through a few (seemingly) small mistakes. Today, let's revisit performance tests with an example of performance tests that I constructed on behalf of a client, as an example of how to do them correctly. Even good performance tests suffer from a paradox. On the one hand, you really want to understand how the product will perform in the real world, with all of its environmental conditions.

Anyone who does Web-scale or information technology over the past two years knows containers. The primary reason is the success of docker in making not-so-new containers easy to build, deploy, manage and use. Personally, I think Docker containers are great. They provide a far more efficient level of isolation than VM virtualization, without sacrificing manageability. Docker itself, however, is a young company, and every now and then young companies, whose products are moving very quickly, make silly mistakes.

How you do deployment is very important, and the technologies you use can have a direct and immediate impact on your bottom line. It also can make your employees happier, which leads to better productivity and lower turnover. But how does deployment technology directly affect your bottom line? Let's look at one. Docker is a "hot new" technology for software deployment. If you are running a cloud or IT business, you might be wondering, "