Agility and scalability are the cornerstones for any organisation that wants to embrace digital transformation. As firms are drifting towards cloud-native applications and microservices, Container Management Services have become a prominent tool driving efficiency and overall performance in IT operations.
The container can be visualised as a package that has all the essential components to run an application. It is lightweight and portable and includes application code, runtime, system tools, libraries, and dependencies. It virtualises the operating system, thereby allowing applications to run in isolated environments while leveraging the same kernel.
Unlike virtual machines (VMs), which copy the entire operating system, resulting in maximum resource utilisation, containers share the host operating system’s kernel but run on isolated user spaces. This helps increase efficiency while utilising minimal resources.
The main characteristics of a container are:
Each container is a standalone entity with its file systems, processes and resource allocation, which runs in isolation. It can communicate with other containers via networking.
Containers can run on any platform that supports container runtimes.
Containers increase efficiency as they are lightweight and use minimal resources.
Container management is the process of organising, deploying, or replacing software containers on an industrial scale. Efficient container management enhances workflows and ensures optimal use of resources and availability of applications in the cloud or on-premises environment. Container management has made the applications modular and scalable. At an enterprise level, where thousands of containers run simultaneously across environments, managing them is a complex task which requires dedicated staff and expertise.
This is where container management comes into play. It simplifies the complexity of managing the containers while providing a framework for deploying, scaling, and operating containerised applications.
One of the crucial functions of container management, orchestration includes automating deployment, scaling, and management of containers across multiple environments.
A scheduler determines which host will run a particular cluster. The decisions are based on the availability of resources, performance needs and workload distribution. At an enterprise level, an orchestrator like Kubernetes leverages the best scheduling algorithm to decide the best server or node to run a container.
Container management services provide automated scaling and load balancing of applications so that they can scale and remain available even as demand oscillates.
Security is paramount in container management. Containers should be scanned, isolated and conform to the access policies of the organisation.
Containerisation helps developers become more agile, shortens the time to market and speeds up deployment, development and testing of the software. As containers are portable, it can be deployed efficiently across different platforms seamlessly, enhancing the existing infrastructure.
Whether you’re new to containers or want to upgrade your existing infrastructure, we at zachsys have the requisite tools and expertise to help you scale your applications.
Our team of seasoned professionals will ensure that your applications are reliable, available and resilient at all times and are posed for growth irrespective of your environment.