To Docker ... And Beyond ....

These two articles are on my reading list: -

Build and extend Docker container images with middleware functions

To transition an IT environment to the cloud, enterprises are using container technology, primarily Docker containers. This approach helps to streamline resource consumption and further automate operational processes. At the same time, several services are required to support enterprise-grade business applications, that is, the existing middleware functions. Such services can apply to integration, messaging, APIs, or hosting applications in a controlled, managed application server environment.

But, to run a Docker container, you must have an image. This tutorial explains how to create and extend Docker images that contain middleware functions so that you can add applications that leverage Docker image layering.

Useful tricks to clean up your Docker dev environment

Many of us who develop with Docker often find that we are:

• Building layers upon layers of  images

• Running a whole fleet of containers originating from various base images and different versions of our own apps

After all, being able to quickly build, spin up and test various code and environment combinations is one of the greatest benefits of container-based development. And there's no better way to test your changes than running a few environments in parallel and switching between them. It's blue-green deployment and A/B testing at your fingertips! But even the strongest development machine has resource limitations. Eventually, we need to remove images and kill some containers just to be able to build and run new versions.

So here are a few useful command-line tricks to help you clean up your working environment.

And then I find out that Docker is being obsoleted by … rat

A security-minded, standards-based container engine

rkt is the next-generation container manager for Linux clusters. Designed for security, simplicity, and composability within modern cluster architectures, rkt discovers, verifies, fetches, and executes application containers with pluggable isolation. rkt can run the same container with varying degrees of protection, from lightweight, OS-level namespace and capabilities isolation to heavier, VM-level hardware virtualisation.

but I won't panic just yet …..