Docker will dramatically broaden the range of PAAs applications

June 10, 2014, the cloud computing community has two events, one is Docker after a long update and improvement, Finally released version 1.0, although there have been many cloud computing vendors to use it in the production environment, and the other is Google announced that embrace Docker,gae and GCE has long been docker secret research and development, will soon have a major release, Wired to call it "the next big thing in cloud computing." Both things are related to lightweight virtual machine Docker.

The occurrence of two events means that Docker technology will replace the traditional PAAs container technology, officially into the mainstream, Docker will also greatly broaden the scope of PAAs application, there is a faint replacement for the IaaS.

In fact, in Docker support, the domestic cloud computing manufacturers do not fall behind people, as early as the Docker development in the early days, the Baidu Bae team studied the Docker technology, and in the BAE3.0 formally adopted and launched a commercial version, Ucloud and so on Docker also support.

Why is Docker so popular?

It starts with PAAs. Since cloud computing has been divided into IaaS, PAAs, and SaaS, PAAs has been in an awkward position, as flexible and free as IaaS, and as straightforward as SaaS to consumers. Some say PAAs is the future of cloud computing, but in recent years IaaS and SaaS have evolved, but PAAs has almost come to a standstill, although a variety of application engines are emerging, but no one dedicated to the development of PAAs applications. Why is that?

This is to blame for traditional PAAs containers, where traditional container technologies have a security problem and do not isolate applications and systems and applications well. To solve this problem, some application engines disable many functions of the language environment, such as the SAE disables the exec functions in PHP, instead of using the SAE alone function.

This poses the problem that applications developed in other environments cannot be painless ported to these PAAs platforms, even for PAAs to recreate an application, or to exploit a good library of others, which makes PAAs a chicken. At the same time, there are performance issues with traditional PAAs containers, which require a lot of time and resources to create and destroy a container.

To address these issues, March 2013 PAAs manufacturer DotCloud released Docker.io, an open-source new Linux lightweight virtual machine technology. It uses virtual machine technology to isolate resources, dramatically improving performance, and greatly improving the ease of deployment applications. The most important thing is that it no longer restricts the function of the language.

From the BAE3.0 experience, the Docker technology is true, it uses a new pricing method-the execution unit, rather than CPU time, initiating the number of connections, and so on, this is because the virtual machine technology brought about by the resource isolation, to ensure that their resources are not occupied by other people.

The future of PAAs

Under the traditional container condition, although the PAAs is subjected to various constraints, but also has the application scene. Famous technical blogger, has presided over Taobao Pagoda Project revision of the Chenhao to PAAs have their own views. In his view, PAAs needs to be combined with specific business to create an industry application service. such as Poly Stone Tower is designed for Taobao business ERP services for the PAAs platform, merchants can develop and deploy a private ERP system on this platform. Other development tools and frameworks have also developed PAAs platform services to provide hosting for applications using the tool, such as the domestic hybrid app development platform Appcan, and cross-platform development framework QT.

Now with the Docker, PAAs will have more room to play, one of which is to replace IaaS in the basic area of cloud computing. The current IaaS only replaces the traditional server, and the deployment of the environment and applications is very small compared to the tradition, but there is a big change in the operational dimension. PAAs such a switch-type environment is obviously more convenient than IaaS, in line with the trend of technological development. PAAs is sufficient to deploy a generic application, but the reason for IaaS is that every company has different needs, and that some unique requirements are not supported in a templated environment. For example, a single execution unit of the current BAE3.0 cannot support a mixed-language environment, a single execution unit has a limit on resources, and so on.

However, these problems are not unresolved, with the Paas+web Api/iaas architecture, the requirements outside the template will be implemented with the Web API, if the demand for resources to be implemented with a separate IaaS, can cover most of the requirements.

As a result, IaaS does not disappear, but part of its use is occupied by PAAs.

There has been a comparison of cloud computing to water and electricity, and we don't need to know where they come from, just a switch, water and electricity. It is clear that PAAs fits that vision. Although it may not have been possible before, we believe that with the Docker, PAAs will occupy a more important position in the cloud computing family.

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