The environment and reason of Docker creation and development

"Editor's note" Today, Docker's talk has been everywhere, and this popular open source project allows people to use software containers to automate the deployment process of the application, which many it giants love. Recently, Luke Lefler summed up the keynote address of Docker's father Solomon Hykes on the New stack, describing the causes and circumstances of Docker's creation.

The following translation

At the FUTURESTACK14 conference meeting in New Relic, Docker's father and Docker company CTO Solomon Hykes's keynote speech summed up the environment and causes of Docker's creation and development.

Solomon points out that today's distributed applications are already inextricably linked to the Internet, and organizations expect that they will be available and run anywhere, no matter how many users, on any device. For applications, they must be resilient, interoperable, and scaled up. More and more developers need not only to meet immediate needs, but also to build complex and commonly used next-generation applications.

This is not a simple job, especially on an old platform that cannot cope with these challenges. When a developer encounters a problem, simply calling Android or iOS friends is no longer an option.

Tool solutions must address the biggest challenges facing developers-applications are no longer running on only one computer. This solution needs to split the logical software components from the underlying infrastructure, so when a host fails, upgrades, or deploys in another environment, the service is always available everywhere, independent of the previous infrastructure environment.

Big technology companies, such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, tend to spend a lot of time and resources on their in-house stacks, while the rest of the organization can only Dongping some open source tools and support them. Solomon sighs:

The feeling is disunity. The developer can't just point to something and say, ' That's the foundation of my build, this is my platform '. It is this situation that inspires us to work together to define and build a platform that meets the needs and can be fun for a long time ...

"Not only running on one computer" can be split into a series of problems, each of which needs to be handled separately. Prior to the release of Docker, Solomon and his team listed these issues and worked to address them.

Their primary solution is encapsulation (packaging) and distribution (distribution), no consistent encapsulation, and the replacement of operating systems, devices, or data centers with tagged software inevitably leads to destabilizing factors. To do so, they have to create a standard format through existing technologies: a consistent container, a Docker container that can move and payload-ready. The second question is how do you execute these payload on different machines and produce consistent, predictable results when the sandbox is running? These two issues define most of the work before the Docker release, and make the project rock solid.

The solution to other problems promises an exciting (and hectic) future. Docker focuses on the dilemma of the network, allowing developers to complete the connection between multiple components of an application and dependent services on a simple tool.

"You have multiple hosts, but you want to interact in a common way," Solomon solves the cluster problem with this idea, "you throw out a variety of technologies, and we try to connect them together and provide a series of interfaces that users can simply use." The same problem appears in the mix, where multiple logical components are connected in a reasonable, versioned way and tested collectively.

"When you deploy complex distributed applications across multiple complex infrastructures, problems quickly arise, especially in a production environment where security, stability, and control requirements are high." In this case, the developer needs to control the progress of the operation exactly, know the creator and clearly who provided the part ... and trace back to the source code, organization, and developer you knew and trusted. "Solomon explains key challenges for each part of cryptographically-enforced authentication during deployment:" This is complementary to licensing issues, using a layer connected to the infrastructure to achieve access control for each component of the application. "In the IT department, authorization has always been a hot topic."

Docker's IRC channel has been active, bringing together dozens of engineers from different companies, some of whom are first contributing to an Open-source project, while others are looking for chance for a precarious project.

In order to build this snowball effect, more and more people and resources are attracted to this project, it is necessary to build such an impression-"it's on to happen, with or without you".

However, if all the present specifications and changes are accepted, there is no room for improvement in the project. Solomon emphasizes that everyone expects loose coupling tools, so many individual tools (often using the simplest way to solve a problem) are integrated into a new tool, and the integrated solution is called "Scale by composition". This combination must use a standard interface, so future contributors can easily participate in the extension of the Toolset, which is acceptable to all.

"We've been implementing the UNIX design principles that have helped the UNIX system implement, and 30 years later we applied this principle to the problems of the 21st century." "Very popular," Solomon said.

"Building a system that is common to all production software, using a widely accepted approach that allows it to run and expand well, to be relied upon by all, and then take it for granted, and use it to create its own miracles, is a challenge." ”

Original link: The New Stack makers:docker Creator Solomon hykes (translation/Dongyang Zebian/Zhonghao)

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