Inaugural Online Meetup: The Containerized Future

We kicked off our first online meetup yesterday with Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill answering dozens of questions from the audience. The focus of the conversation was surrounding the future of containers and what concerns are preventing greater adoption in production. Bryan also candidly addressed several questions regarding the recent announcement of Joyent's Triton Elastic Container Service, now available in preview.

We had a lot of requests to post the recording, so here it is, but keep sending your questions in to devops@joyent.com and we'll answer them in upcoming blog posts. Be sure to follow us at @joyent.

Here are some of the questions Bryan addressed:

  1. What are people doing with containers?
  2. Why are people notrunning containers in production, even though there is a lot of hype?
  3. Is Joyent just Docker-washing everything? What's different about Joyent's interest in Docker from others?
  4. You say Linux was late to containers, but Google has be running on Linux containers for YEARS!
  5. What makes Joyent's container technology more secure?
  6. What are some of the complexities of networking containers?
  7. Are sparse zones more efficient at using system resources than whole-root zones?
  8. If my application is monolithic and runs on 1 large server, what are the steps to containerize my app?
  9. What's the difference between application containers and infrastructure containers?
  10. Are there cases where a traditional (KVM) Linux VM in Joyent's cloud is preferable to a Triton Linux container?
  11. What are some examples of how software teams use Docker to get "big wins?" What are the main benefits for these teams?
  12. If I'm willing to commit to SmartOS/Illumos zones as my primary server OS, does Docker provide any benefit over the more traditional approach of Zones? How would Triton fit in for people who don't need Linux?
  13. One of the main reasons for using containers & Docker is portability, but Triton sounds like a proprietary solution that will only work on Joyent...is that true?
  14. Do you agree that "containerization" really, eventually, becomes an exercise in API design? I.e., the measure of a well-designed web-service boils down to best practices in API design.
  15. Are there any plans to provide Linux Triton containers for Manta jobs? ...and how is Manta different from map-reduce?
  16. Any thoughts on support for or compatibility with for Docker orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes? Don't focus on scheduling, but service discovery, routing, and health management.
  17. What series of mistakes led you to your current enlightenment?
  18. How seamless is it to move private cloud workloads into Triton public cloud and vice versa?
  19. Will Docker + Triton allow me to control virtual networking in the Joyent cloud/SmartDataCenter, or do I need to do this via CloudAPI?
  20. Speaking of all the "energy" around Docker, can you recommend a good document/encyclopedia/Rosetta-Stone that helps me understand all the new technologies/products AND how they relaate & overlap? My frustration tempts me to just give myself over to Joyent's (or someone else's) opinionated stack. ;-)
  21. What's your opinion about Chronos, Mesos generally and also in light of cloud and Docker elasticity, including Google's Kubernetes?
  22. How possible is it to build a PaaS based on containers?
  23. Is it possible or probable that OS virtualization could overtake hardware virtualization?
  24. Are there any drawbacks to containerization?
  25. You said, "running containers in VMs contributes to global warming." What did you mean by this?
  26. How does SmartOS + Docker compare to CoreOS + Rocket?
  27. Do we have a ballpark ETA for Triton availability beyond the public beta? When will Triton+Docker be GA to try on a private cloud? How seamless an upgrade would be from SDC7?


Post written by Casey Bisson