What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction to Linux Containers, provides an in-depth exploration of the history of containers in the Linux kernel, along with some fundamental terminology. After going through the basics, you will have a detailed view of how kernel namespaces and control groups (cgroups) are implemented and will be able to experiment with some C system calls.
Chapter 2, Installing and Running LXC on Linux Systems, covers everything that is needed to install, configure, and run LXC on Ubuntu and Red Hat systems. You will learn what packages and tools are required along with different ways of configuring LXC. By the end of this chapter, you will have a Linux system with running LXC containers.
Chapter 3, Command-Line Operations Using Native and Libvirt Tools, is all about running and operating LXC on the command line. The chapter will cover various tools from a list of packages and demonstrate different ways of interacting with your containerized application. The focus will be on the functionality that libvirt and the native LXC libraries provide in controlling the full life cycle of an LXC container.
Chapter 4, LXC Code Integration with Python, will show examples of how to write tools and automate LXC provisioning and management using Python libraries. You will also learn how to create a development environment using Vagrant and LXC.
Chapter 5, Networking in LXC with the Linux Bridge and Open vSwitch, will be a deep dive into networking in the containerized world—connecting LXC to the Linux bridge, using direct connect, NAT, and various other methods. It will also demonstrate more advanced technics of traffic management using Open vSwitch.
Chapter 6, Clustering and Horizontal Scaling with LXC, builds upon the knowledge presented in earlier chapters to build a cluster of Apache containers and demonstrate how to connect them using GRE tunnels with Open vSwitch. The chapter also presents examples of running single process applications inside minimal root filesystem containers.
Chapter 7, Monitoring and Backups in a Containerized World, is about backing up your LXC application containers and deploying monitoring solutions to alert and trigger actions. We are going to see examples of using Sensu and Monit for monitoring, and iSCSI and GlusterFS for creating hot and cold backups.
Chapter 8, Using LXC with OpenStack, demonstrates how to provision LXC containers with OpenStack. It begins by introducing the various components that make OpenStack and how to use the LXC nova driver to automatically provision LXC containers among a pool of compute resources.
Appendix, LXC Alternatives to Docker and OpenVZ, ends the book by demonstrating how other popular container solutions, such as Docker and OpenVZ, came to be and the similarities and differences between them. It also explores practical examples of installing, configuring, and running them alongside LXC.
