Docker: Empowering App Development for Developers

Docker is a popular open-source project which uses a container engine with Linux Kernel features. Docker is developed by the Dot cloud (A PaaS Company). Docker uses features like namespace, and control groups to develop the containers on top of the operating system. It also automates application deployments. Docker provides a lightweight environment for running application code and for backend storage, uses Copy – on – a write union file system.

It comes with a workflow for moving from a developer’s laptop to a testing and production environment. Dockers give you a fast and efficient solution to run your application. Docker takes less time to create a container (it’s less than a second)

How Docker helps developers?

Today, developing any application is much more than coding. You may need to integrate it with multiple languages, architectures, interfaces, frameworks, etc. Working with these tools, and different lifecycle stages is a complex task. Docker container accelerates and simplifies the workflow and gives freedom to the developer for selecting the choice of tools, deployment environment, and application stacks.

Docker container technology is unique because it mainly focuses on the developer’s requirement and systems operators to separate application dependencies from infrastructure.

For building and deploying any application, a container is a faster and easier option. Especially Docker containers are used to wrap all the code and dependencies into a standard unit. This unit continues all the software development essentials needed for running code, system tools, and libraries. The application can run smoothly by sharing the container image.

A developer can use the Docker tools and APIs on Linux as well as the Windows operating systems. Docker helps you to build software faster without wasting work hours setting up the development environment. Docker enables polyglot development and uses different languages or tools without any application conflicts

Docker also gives you the benefit of application security and eliminates environmental inconsistency issues. It solves the problem of packaging and configuring the application with dependencies.

Things about Docker

Docker technology was launched in 2013 as an open-source Docker Engine. Docker is composed of four major components namely – containers, Docker client and Daemon, Docker registries, and Images.

People often misunderstand Docker as LXC or a virtual machine solution. Docker is neither LXC nor a virtual machine. It is not a replacement for a puppet, chef, Ansible, etc. Doker is neither a platform as a service technology nor a configuration system.

In the case of Docker containers, images become containers while running on the Docker Engine. Docker containers are available for Linux as well as Windows applications.

In other words, Docker is a tool created for system administrators as well as developers for developing many DevOps toolchains. Dockers help system administrators by reducing the system requirements and giving the flexibility of working. On the other hand, Developers can write code hassle-free, without thinking about system requirements and other parts.

The Docker containerized application runs the same irrespective of the infrastructure and it isolates software from its environment.

 Qualities of Docker:

• Docker containers are standard and portable
• Docker Containers are secure with the highest isolation capabilities.
• Docker containers are lightweight and share the operating system kernel and don’t require higher server efficiencies and licensing costs

Benefits of Docker

Efficiency

With the help of Docker, you can build a container image and use it across all the steps of the deployment process. The speed of production and build is less due to the ability to separate non-dependent steps and parallel run.

Faster Configurations

Docker container technology is simpler where users can take their own configuration and deploy it. It can be used in a range of environments irrespective of infrastructure requirements.

Compatibility

Docker containers come with parity, which means an image can be run on any environment any server or any laptop smoothly without any compatibility issues. It saves developers time in setting up environments and debugging environment-specific issues.

Fast Deployment

Docker creates a container for every process, hence no booting of OS is required. And thus it reduces the deployment time and data can be created and destroyed at any time.

Isolation

Docker gives you complete isolation for your applications and resources. Each application runs on a separate container with different stacks.

Open-source

Docker containers technology is open-source technology with open standards. Anybody can tweak the Docker tool and contribute to meet their needs.

Empowers the developer's creativity

As Docker is open source technology, the source codes are sharable with Github. Docker’s hub is a community that encourages developers for spreading innovation

To summarize, collaboration is the best feature of Docker. Docker images can be pulled down from the repository at any point in time to any platform or device. Docker hub gives you different images that can be used for your application requirements.  At Ambab, we offer all types of Docker services, Docker integration services, and many more.