Container architecture
Containers are an operating system-level virtualization method that we can use to run multiple isolated processes on a single host machine. Containers allow applications to run in an isolated environment with their own dependencies, libraries, and configuration files without the overhead of a full virtual machine (VM), which makes them lighter and more efficient.
If we compare containers to traditional VMs, they differ in a few ways. VMs virtualize at the hardware level, creating a full virtual operating system. Containers, on the other hand, virtualize at the operating system level. Because of that, containers share the host system’s kernel, whereas VMs each have their own kernel. This allows containers to have much faster startup times, typically in milliseconds compared to minutes for VMs (it is worth noting that in a Linux environment, Docker can leverage the capabilities of a Linux kernel directly. While running in a Windows system, however, it...
