Containerization and Its Benefits - Defining and Exploring

There is no end to innovation and invention in technology. As the demand and complexity grow, the need arises to develop something that fits all your business needs and that eases the workflow as well.

Technology is something that is widely comprehended for the ease and comfort that it provides, saving time and money.

Similarly, software development and the IT industry have evolved a lot with time to match the needs of people and businesses, simplifying their day-to-day tasks. But what remains unseen here by the people is the endeavors of the developers and software engineers who work thoroughly on a project to deliver the best quality.

Technological innovation has simplified tasks for people and businesses and assisted developers with specific tools and technologies, making their work easier and more efficient.

One such thing that has boosted productivity and also accelerated the pace of cloud migration in the software development process is a technique known as containerization which is a leaner and more efficient method of virtualization.

What is a Container?

In simple terms, containers are lightweight, isolated, portable, and self-contained packages of software that are composed of components that include binaries, dependencies, configuration files, and other components that are needed to run in any environment.

It helps in virtualizing the operating system to run anywhere such as on bare metal, or in the cloud, and helps create new, scalable cloud-native applications. They operate on an abstracted layer and have restricted access to the system resources.

Additionally, containerization also helps the developers to move fast, deploy software, and operate with higher productivity and increased efficiency. It offers applications with direct access to computing resources without any additional software layers.

YouTube, Google, and Microsoft Edge are examples of applications that operate in containers.

Benefits of Containerization

Containerization is granular and flexible and it focuses on splitting the operating system into chunks for higher efficiency. It is widespread across industries and has helped them for rapid acceleration and has significant benefits. Some of the benefits of taking this process into action are -

Adopting something new is a tough decision, and below we have described the benefits of containerization to help you make better decisions.

1. Portability -

The primary benefit of the container is that it provides excellent portability across digital workspaces. Containerization is incomplete without the term “write once, run anywhere” (WORA).

The app container creates a software package abstracted away from the host operating system and is executable which makes it independent without rebuilding it for a new environment, and also allows it to run consistently across the cloud or any other platform.

How Docker Container Works?

The abstraction that is provided makes the container work seamlessly, regardless of the deployment platform.

2. Flexibility -

Containerization allows the developers the flexibility to operate the code in the virtualized or bare-metal environment, and also enables them to meet all the requirements for deployment. Additionally, it also allows you to switch between metal to virtual, or vice-versa in a sudden need to retool your environment. Its flexible characteristics also enable you to host certain elements on bare metal and deploy them to other environments.

The container environment also helps in creating multiple new containerized instances of apps ensuring high flexibility and also allowing the developers to rectify errors in one container without any downtime in other containers.

3. Quicker Delivery -

On-time delivery is an important term in development and containerization solves the issue by organizing your application. It makes the upgradation process quicker and accelerates the configuration and deployment processes.

Kubernetes vs Docker Swarm

It also helps you to individualize parts of your application using microservices in the form of containers. This helps the developers in implementing changes and deploying the new code without any impact on the entire code.

Further, the lightweight design of containers helps you release new features and upgrades quickly, and also speeds up the time to market, and also accelerates other development-related tasks.

As the files and codes remain within the container, it makes it easy and accessible to the developers without having to search for the appropriate resources or repeat them to be used on multiple servers.

4. Efficiency - 

The software that runs in containerized environments allows the developers to share the app layers across containers. The containers have a smaller capacity as compared to virtual machines and require minimal startup times, which makes it easy for the developers to run more containers. This helps drive higher efficiency, increases server density, and also reduces server and licensing costs since they do not require a separate operating system and use fewer resources.

5. Improved Security -

With the introduction of isolated containers, containerization also provides an additional layer of security. The isolated container helps in preventing malicious code from affecting other containerized apps or the host system, which also automatically blocks access to unwanted components.

What is Container Security and How to Secure Containers?

It also emits risk factors, which implies that you can share all the necessary resources without sharing any other critical information within your network. Since containers are isolated from one another, it enables the applications to run in their own self-contained environment, which implies that if the security of any one container is compromised, it does not affect the other containers on the same host.

The above listed are the primary benefits of containerization, besides this, the other benefits of containerization are -

1. Containers make it easy to deploy the service since they are available in small chunks.

7. It doesn’t require any setup environment

8. There is zero downtime during app updates, without any impact on the entire application.

9. It also enables easy roll-back application on any failure

10. Containers are also capable of handling increasing workloads, are scalable, and it also distributes all the available resources efficiently.

11. It accelerates the start-up time since there is no OS to boot, and also that containers are lightweight in nature.

12. It is also cost-effective and reduces the cost of infrastructure operations.

13. With the container architecture, developers spend less time debugging the environmental differences, which helps them in investing their time in adding new features to an application and also increases their productivity and minimizes errors.

Popular Containerization Tools

Now that you have a clear vision regarding the benefits of containerization, below we have listed some essential container technology tools and resources for your convenience, which you can use for software development.

1. Docker

2. Kubernetes

3. Container Linux

4. Apache Mesos

5. OpenShift

6. Microsoft Azure

7. Google Cloud Platform

The aforementioned tools are among the most used containerization tools. Some other containerization tools include Docker Enterprise, Docker Swarm, Portainer, Google Container Engine, and many more.

These tools will surely help you with containerization and accelerate the software development process along with providing quality software and hassle-free development to the developers.

Conclusion

Containerization is the latest buzzword in cloud computing and has played a revolutionary role in the software industry. Along with being a complement to the DevOps process, this technique is on a significant rise for the benefits that it renders.

Due to the benefits of containerization enterprises are rapidly adopting this method, which has accelerated their development process as well as increased the productivity of developers as well.

If you have an application idea why wait, we have already listed the benefits which will help you decide better and develop a future-proof application.