Cloud containers are remarkable tools in the field of agile software development. Containers, evolved from the ‘security’ buzzword, have become an essential element for protecting the IT infrastructure. The trend shows no indications of winding down. Container ecosystems will record a rapid development, with cloud service providers focused on technology improvement.
The popularity of containers grew as a feasible go-to strategy of enterprises for virtualization. This status quo of containers will prevail in the near future, as vendors and open-source community formalize the container ecosystem. Complementing virtualization and low overhead, containers are best suited for the application ecosystem that is inherited from cloud computing, data centers, and VMs.
Evolution of Containers
There has been a marked rise in the evolution of the container ecosystem in recent years, which has made them capable to uphold production-ready workloads. The evolution is not yet over and has given rise to many container platforms to implement modern service and applications with the onus of combating developer problems.
While every container platform has been built on a programmable, API-driven, and self-service infrastructure, Kubernetes rose as the standard for container orchestration, completely based on its technical pedigree. As more and more organizations embark on their journey to containerization, identifying the imperativeness of data persistence has become necessary for enterprise applications.
Kubernetes excels in this owing to its ability of seamless provision of persistent storage capabilities, independent of whether workloads are scheduled in the cloud or on-premises. These capabilities are attributed to Kubernetes’ Persistent Volume Framework that standardizes the dynamic provision and consumption of persistent storage by application pods.
Container Management and its Implications
There is this one feature requested by prospects and customers in the cloud computing space – container management. One of the many growing optimization trends, containers help to package and run applications remotely in isolated environments and reduce the configuration time during deployment to production.
The majority industry researches estimate the current worth of the container market to be over $2 Bn. As CSPs commence to plan their container management offerings, a better understanding of whether this popularity of containers is just a hype, or do the customers really want and need the containers is a must. Ambiguities also exist in deciding for the right type of container management required, particularly in cloud computing space.
Container management, analogous to the broader cloud management, involves orchestration, monitoring, security, and optimization. Based on optimization alone, there are 5 key ways to save on the cost of cloud containers, namely, review purchasing options, consider storage opportunities, rightsize the nodes and pods, and turn off the idle pods.
The focus on container management is a must if you plan to leverage any type of cloud container, as they offer opportunities for lightweight and efficient application development. However, likened to an on-demand computing resource, containers also result in wasted spend. As suboptimal, idle, and unused container options will add billions more to this waste, container management must be a part of an organization’s cloud optimization plan.
In a bid to understand the evolution of containers, knowledge on three phases of containerization is necessary, namely, staging and PaaS dominate, container deployment at scale and the take over of containerization services. It is highly likely that CSPs slash costs for container services while beefing up these services with security tools for attracting more customers. Whatever the future holds, the positive impacts of the container evolution on the evolution of cloud computing is evident and is set to endure in the years to come.
