Containerisation

In the early 2010’s Docker gave the world the gift of easy-to-use containers.

At a high level, containers are another form of virtualisation that allow us to run even more apps on less servers and deploy them even faster.

Figure 1.1 shows a side-by-side comparison of server virtualisation and container virtualisation.

Figure 1.1

As the image shows, server virtualisation slices a physical server into multiple virtual machines (VM). Each VM looks, smells, and feels like a physical server, meaning each one has virtual CPUs, virtual memory, virtual hard drives, and virtual network cards. You install an operating system (OS) on each one and then install one app per VM. If a single physical server is sliced into 10 virtual machines, there will be 10 operating systems and you can install 10 apps.

Container virtualisation slices operating systems into virtual operating systems called containers. Each container looks, smells, and feels like a normal...