As we all know,
Docker has developed into one of the core technologies of
cloud computing on a global scale.
As a popular container management technology, the biggest advantage of Docker is that it can separate the application from the computing environment, allowing developers to use different technologies on the same computer. With Docker, developers can make applications run Python, Ruby, PHP, Node JS or any other language on the same server, and install each application in a separate container with a separate database engine.
However, Docker's latest terms of service that came into effect on August 13 have aroused widespread concern in the domestic IT industry. The clause clearly states that the services provided by Docker are prohibited from use by entities on the US "Entity List".
Docker is far from a perfect product and has many shortcomings. For example, it must be run with root privileges, and stopping the container will delete all information (except the contents of the volume). Other shortcomings include: security and isolation are not as good as VMs, large-scale not easy to manage (K8s applications), difficult to troubleshoot problems, does not support Windows, etc.
In fact, there are many excellent alternatives to Docker software at present, and many of these products are not inferior or even better than Docker in terms of technical maturity, stability and resource consumption.
Below, we recommend ten excellent alternatives to Docker.
OpenVZ
OpenVZ is a popular operating system-level server virtualization technology based on Linux, which can create multiple secure and isolated virtual environments in a single physical server, thereby improving server utilization and performance. The virtual server ensures that applications will not conflict and can be restarted independently.
OpenVZ also provides a network file system (NFS) that allows access to network disk files from the OpenVZ virtual environment. This tool supports checkpointing and real-time migration of IA64 processors. This feature is not available in other open source operating system virtualization software. System administrators can use virtual servers to move between physical servers without end-user intervention without expensive Storage system.
Rancher
Rancher is an open source container management technology that provides complete container infrastructure services, including network, storage services, host management, and load balancing. It supports various infrastructures and can deploy and manage applications simply and reliably.
Nanobox
Nanobox is the ideal DevOps platform for developers. Nanobox can do all the construction, configuration, and management of the infrastructure, so you can focus on code instead of configuration.
With Nanobox, you are free to create a consistent and isolated development environment that can be easily shared with anyone and can be implemented on any host (AWS, Digital Ocean, Azure, Google, etc.). Developers can run their applications consistently between the local computer and the cloud provider.
Podman
PodMan is a virtualized container manager that can be used in Linux distributions. Its special feature is that it does not need to run Daemon, but runs directly on runC. PodMan allows us to run containers as users without root privileges. This is extremely important from a security perspective!
With Podman, not only can we check OCI images without even downloading them, but we can also extract elements from one repository and move them directly to another repository without the need for image files to be transferred through our device. We do not need to download the mirror to check or use its components. Podman also allows running containers with Systemd enabled by default without any modification.
RKT
RKT belongs to the Core OS release, developed specifically for container virtualization and processing. Today, it has become one of Docker's biggest competitors. RKT can work on Linux platforms such as ArchLinux, Core OS, Fedora, NixOS, etc.
One of the main reasons Core OS decided to start RKT is security. Prior to version 1.1, Docker needed to be run as the root user. This is a very serious vulnerability that allows superuser-level attacks. In contrast, RKT allows us to use standard group handling for Linux permissions, allowing containers to run after being created by users without root privileges.
The advantage of Docker is that it is easy to integrate, while RKT requires more manual installation and configuration. In any case, it is still a good alternative to Docker because it allows us to use APPC images (App container images) as well as Docker images. In turn, it also allows integration with Kubernetes and AWS Orchestrator.
Singularity
Singularity is an operating system virtualizer for HPC (High Performance Computing) because it does not need to run with a user with root privileges, and because of its isolation level, it is very suitable for use in shared spaces. Its security concept is "insecure clients run insecure containers", which completely changes the security paradigm.
Another important fact about Singularity is that we can import and use Docker images that we already have. We can even edit the container locally and then mount it in a shared environment, because it can be mounted without root privileges. You can also use basic file transfer protocols (such as RSYNC, HTTP, SCP, etc.) for transmission.
Kubernetes (K8s)
Kubernetes is an open source system for automatically organizing and managing containerized applications. If you want to design applications using popular open source Linux containers, then Kubernets may be one of the most ideal ways to create cloud-native applications for private, public or hybrid cloud hosting.
Kubernetes automates the deployment, management, and expansion of containerized applications, making the process easier, faster, and more efficient. Users can now update the core version of Kubernetes they use in the cluster with a one-click update. Keeping the Kubernetes cluster up-to-date has become quite easy, as it can now be done without redeploying the cluster or applications.
Kubernetes is an open source project, managed by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and Linux Foundation. This ensures that the project is supported by the best practices and ideas of the large open source community, and also eliminates the risk of relying on a single provider.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is an open source enterprise-level Kubernetes platform that can be used to develop, deploy, and manage containerized applications across enterprise, private cloud, and public cloud architectures.
Apache Mesos
Mesoso is an open source cluster management tool based on the Linux kernel, which can run on any platform (Linux, Windows or OSX). It also provides APIs for resource management and planning for applications. CPU, memory, storage and other resources can be extracted from dedicated servers or virtual machines, so that the elastic system is easy to build and can run efficiently, with outstanding fault tolerance.
Mesos uses a two-tier scheduling system in which it determines the number of resources to be allocated to each framework, and the framework determines which resources to accept and which tasks to run on those resources. You can scale to 50,000 nodes, share clusters between different frameworks, and continuously optimize.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is known for its features, speed, security and stability. It comes from BSD, which is an adaptation of UNIX deployed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is deployed and followed by a wide community. FreeBSD provides many unique features, especially famous for creating excellent Internet or Intranet servers. FreeBSD can provide powerful network services under high load, high memory utilization efficiency, and can quickly respond to millions of concurrent processes.
FreeBSD also provides improved network operating system functions for connectors and complete platforms, supporting high-end connectors from Intel to ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC hardware platforms. FreeBSD has more than 23,000 libraries and appearance applications that can support applications for desktops, assistants, devices, and integrated media.
Vagrant
Vagrant is a tool for automatically creating and configuring portable and running virtual machines. Compared with DevOps tools like Docker, one of Vagrant's advantages is that any computer scientist/programmer/developer (even Windows users) can quickly master and use it, because Vagrant can configure and automatically create virtual machines .
Vagrant is installed on the developer's computer and is geared towards the development environment, not the production environment. Even Vagrant's development company does not recommend using Vagrant in a production environment. Vagrant is cross-platform and supports systems including: Mac, Windows, CentOS and Debian. Vagrant's positioning is between developers, installing portable and running development environment tools.
LXC
LXC is an operating system-level virtualization technology that allows users to independently create and run multiple virtual Linux environments.
The difference with Docker is that LXC can be seen as a complete operating system. On the other hand, Docker can only run a single application and has certain restrictions on the OS. Compared with Docker, LXC is a lighter and safer choice because it consumes fewer resources and does not need to be run as root.
