Container Management is the process of organizing, replacing, and adding software containers. Basically, it is used to manage the containers. It uses software to manage the containers required and deploys or scales them as per the requirement. Container Management solves the issue of deploying the containers one by one separately. Using the operating-system-level virtualization, it manages the software containers. It streamlines container delivery and optimizes its efficiency without the use of complex interdependent structures.
Container management provides software and/or services that support the management of containers, at scale, in production environments. Source: Gartner, Inc
Containers are popular because it enables faster deployment and development of applications. They have all the software, libraries, and files to run the application. It combines the microservices and the libraries into one unit, which can be deployed on the container management software without affecting the host operating system's computer resources.
Need For Container Management
Container Management is a buzzword nowadays within Enterprises willing to establish a proper management procedure for the container software. Get to know some of the reasons below:
Quick deployment of containers
Quick update of the application
Provides scheduling
Application Security
Storage and Monitoring
Removes the differences in the environment
The great degree of modularity
Lightweight as compared to a virtual machine
Quick boot-up as compared to the virtual machine
Container Management Platform
Container Management Platform or Software consists of a runtime environment that contains the application, its dependencies, all the supporting files, and configuration settings needed to run the application and are contained in a single package. Willing to know about a popular container management platform now? Scroll ahead.
Docker Platform
Docker, a renowned Container Management Platform, supports various applications, OS, infrastructure, and orchestrators. It enables automated and integrated container security policies. Docker provides automated governance and is portable across clouds.
Better as compared to virtualization as less downtime.
No need not worry about different versions of programming language, libraries, etc.
Docker is an open-source project.
A lot of plugins are available for Docker.
Cons of Docker
Hard to set up.
It takes time to understand the concept and working of Docker.
It takes a lot more time to create persistent storage.
No proper GUI available.
AWS Fargate Platform
AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine that works for Amazon Elastic Container Service and Amazon Kubernetes Service. It enables the execution of containers without managing the servers or clusters. This Container Management Platform also enables to focus on the application rather than addressing the infrastructure to run them. Fargate manages the infrastructure and scaling for the container on its own.
Pros of Fargate
Building a cloud-native application is easy with this tool.
Good for horizontal scaling.
Easy scale up and scale down of production workloads dynamically.
Launching a large number of containers can be done in seconds.
Easy integration with the EC-2 instance.
Execute containers without thinking about managing servers and clusters.
Simple and easy to use User Interface.
Cons of Fargate
Requires significant effort to learn and implement.
Costly as compared to other container services.
Its customer support is not that strong, as it is a new product.
Container storage is limited to the task.
Google Kubernetes Engine
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is secured and managed Kubernetes service, which supports multi-cluster and auto-scaling. This Container Management Platform provides hybrid networking to provide clusters to coexist with the private network through Google Cloud VPN. It supports auto repair when enabled. The GKE initiates the repair for the node which has failed the health check.
Pros of GKE
Support Load Balancing.
Support Docker images.
Allows auto-scaling.
GPU Support.
Container Optimised OS
Intuitive GUI.
High SLA of 99.5%.
Clusters can be managed through the web interface.
Highly secured.
Easy setup on Google cloud.
Cons of GKE
Setting up a manual cluster is time-consuming and costly.
Time-consuming in detecting errors and deploying an automated fix.
Logs are difficult to understand.
Need time to expertise in this tool.
Amazon Elastic Container Service
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a Container Management Platform that supports Docker containers and permits users to execute and scale containerized applications on Amazon AWS easily. This service is highly scalable. It eliminates the requirement to install and manage your own container orchestration software.
Pros of ECS
Easy integration with other services present in Amazon cloud.
Container Auto-recovery.
Supports AWS Fargate technology, which handles the availability of containers.
Compatible with Windows containers via Amazon Machine Image.
Support Elastic Load Balancing.
Ability to define a custom scheduler.
For monitoring and access control support Amazon Cloud
Cons of ECS
Creating a load balancer service is challenging.
The problem of capacity while deploying the new version of the Docker image.
Microsoft Azure Platform
Microsoft Azure is a unique Container Management Platform that offers different container services according to its needs. It has hybrid platform support and is a fully managed container platform. Azure supports most of the programming languages.
Your Requirement
Use This
Scaling and Orchestrating Linux Containers employing Kubernetes
Azure Kubernetes Service
Install APIs or web Apps employing Linux containers in a PaaS environment
Azure App Service
Elastic Bursting with AKS, Event-driven Apps
Azure Container Instances
Batch computing, cloud-scale job scheduling
Azure Batch
Microservices development
Azure Service Fabric
Store and manage images of all kinds of containers
Azure Container Registry
Pros of Azure
Easy setup.
Run on-premise or in the cloud.
Very Interactive CLI
Works well with CI/CD.
Very flexible
Highly scalable
Application Insights and Log Analytics for a complete view of containers.
Run on-premise or in the cloud.
Compatible with many Open source client-side tools.
Cons of Azure
After deployment, difficult to upgrade Kubernetes nodes.
Multiple OS cannot be integrated under a single container.
Summing-up Container Management
Container Management Platform comes with its merits and demerits, and the main thing in choosing the right Container Management Platform depends upon the user requirements and the features. No container management platform can fulfill the requirement alone. All the thing boils down to the feature, which is more important in the container management platform, and what are things the user can let go.
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