Managing Virtual Containers

Build the Kubernetes home lab that's right for your job

Kubernetes and the growing number of commercial container management tools based on it require specialized skills and experience from the application to the infrastructure. Continue Reading

Learn Kubernetes infrastructure in a personal lab

Live servers are not the place to build up Kubernetes skills. Instead, set up a Kubernetes cluster, and start experimenting with it on a laptop in a lab. Continue Reading

By

• Alastair Cooke

Windows Server 2019 preview draws Azure closer

Windows Server 2019 will come with a number of enhancements to cater to administrators who want a tighter connection to the Azure cloud platform, Microsoft said. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Walat, Site Editor

Kubernetes 1.10 release hits mature enterprise container market

Kubernetes 1.10 adds incremental feature updates, but enterprises will look to third-party products to integrate upstream code before they embrace it. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Kubernetes gains momentum in big data implementation process

Big data vendors and users are looking to Kubernetes-managed containers to help accelerate deployments and enable more flexible use of computing resources. Continue Reading

By

• Craig Stedman, Industry Editor

Ten lessons for enterprises deploying containers

The majority of medium to large enterprises surveyed by EMA foresee containers replacing VMs in two to five years. Unsurprisingly, container management and shadow containers are pressing concerns. Continue Reading

By

• Torsten Volk, Principal Analyst

Aqua Security 3.0 architecture supports AWS Fargate

Aqua Security's MicroEnforcer deployed without a sidecar container supports containers on public cloud services such as AWS Fargate and Azure Container Instances. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

The role of container management software in IT ops

Containers are a useful technology, but give some thought to how you'll manage them. Here's what to know about what's available and how to find the right fit. Continue Reading

By

• Alan R. Earls

Integrate DevOps and containers with simple tool adjustments

Organizations with an established DevOps pipeline can migrate from VMs to containers without tossing out the entire toolstack. Focus on these steps to enable containers in production. Continue Reading

By

• Kurt Marko, MarkoInsights

Future of Windows might involve significant weight loss

The influence of containerized applications could sway Microsoft to introduce more far-reaching refinements to Windows Server and reduce the OS to the bare necessities. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Walat, Site Editor

Container security tools abound, but IT pros await big vendors

Container security startups peddle unique approaches, but while some early adopters jump on board with fledgling vendors, a majority will watch for industry consolidation first. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Hype for future of container development gets dose of reality

Realistic timelines have replaced the big promises of container disruption. Virtualization administrators should expect security and microservices features as the market matures. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Container adoption stats reveal a ramp up in production

There's a 50/50 chance your IT organization will provision and support container-based applications by 2020. See how organizations approach container deployment, including how much they need to spend. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Bernard

Kubernetes hybrid cloud emerges from Google-Cisco partnership

A Kubernetes partnership from Cisco and Google widens IT pros' container orchestration options in hybrid cloud deployments, but its advantages depend on future software integrations. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Kubernetes storage projects dominate CNCF docket

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation will host the Rook distributed container storage project -- the first move in a pivotal year for Kubernetes stateful app support. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

CoreOS acquisition burnishes Red Hat containers profile

Most IT shops don't deploy containers in production, but more might be enticed by the addition of CoreOS tools to Red Hat's OpenShift. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

OpenShift on OpenStack aims to ease VM, container management

In this Q&A, Red Hat's Brian Gracely discusses managing a virtual environment that has both VMs and containers and how OpenShift on OpenStack can help. Continue Reading

By

• Ryann Burnett, Executive Managing Editor

Container orchestration tools ease distributed system complexity

Containers simplify some aspects of enterprise apps, but the deployment process is no walk in the park. Orchestration tools bring standardization and automation to complex hosting scenarios. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Nolle, Andover Intel

AI apps demand DevOps infrastructure automation

Businesses look to AI apps to gain a competitive edge, but IT teams must make rapid application changes through a DevOps process and embrace infrastructure automation. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Ensure container monitoring and control via smart tooling

Don't try to stick with traditional monitoring tools when your organization matures to containers; they won't do enough. Seek out monitoring and management tools with targeted capabilities. Continue Reading

By

• Clive Longbottom

Docker Enterprise Edition prospects mull vendor strategy

Uncertain about Docker's future business growth, some enterprise IT pros are on the fence about whether to invest in its container orchestration tools. Continue Reading

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• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Container infrastructure a silver lining amid Intel CPU flaw fixes

Containers aren't immune to Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, but they could lighten the operational burden of fixes for IT pros. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Make the case to follow a container strategy at your company

Sorting through container management software can be overwhelming. Determine what your organization actually needs in terms of security and cloud capabilities before leaping in. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Nolle, Andover Intel

PKS complements VMware's cloud-native application portfolio

Pivotal Container Service takes a DevOps-oriented approach to containers and improves VMware's cloud-native application strategy by adding Kubernetes support to vSphere. Continue Reading

By

• Alastair Cooke

SequenceFile

A SequenceFile is a flat, binary file type that serves as a container for data to be used in Hadoop distributed compute projects. SequenceFiles are used extensively with MapReduce. Continue Reading

By

• TechTarget Contributor

Container OS options abound: Make the right selection

There is an assortment of OSes that support containerized applications, so go into the decision with a set of wants, needs and must-avoids. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Nolle, Andover Intel

Persistent data storage in containerized environments

The most significant challenge to the rise of containerized applications is quickly and easily providing enterprise-class persistent storage for containers. Continue Reading

By

• Mike Matchett, Small World Big Data

Know how container host machine resources get used?

What's a container's resource limit? How do they scale? What OS does a host machine need? Answer 10 questions to prove your container deployment knowledge. Continue Reading

By

• Meredith Courtemanche, Director of Editorial Training

Docker-supported OS list expands with Enterprise Edition update

Docker Enterprise Edition fired back at Kubernetes with new support for mixed clusters and applications, as well as advanced security features that target large enterprises. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

The art of managing IT risk is never quite mastered

Risks abound, and no amount of preparation or caution will eliminate them entirely from our lives. This is as true now as it was in the past, and it likely will remain true in the future.

While technology enables us all to work more effectively and productively, the necessity of managing IT risk remains. Risk follows wherever we go -- from the data center to the cloud, from virtualized workloads to containers. Smart IT organizations are continuously assessing threats and then devising ways to minimize them. That's the goal, at least.

This issue of Modern Infrastructure examines some of the current approaches to managing IT risk, from maintaining security to handling costs.

In our cover story, TechTarget's Beth Pariseau writes about the particular challenges of container security. IT shops have been reluctant to put containers in production in large part because of the uncertainty about how secure they might be. Updates from Docker and more disciplined app development practices are making containers less risky, Pariseau writes. And there's reason to think that containers could be even more secure than VMs.

Getting comfortable with containers is a process not unlike how technology professionals learned how to safely use cloud services. It takes some time and effort, but managing IT risk can bring exciting and powerful new tools safely into the fold.

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Securing containers keeps IT jumping through hoops

Container isolation doesn't cut it in production. Instead, beef up security from the infrastructure to the application code, and be prepared to use some new tools to do it. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

When to use Docker alternatives rkt and LXD

Docker can't meet the needs of every IT scenario. LXD and CoreOS rkt are additional container formats to try out when Docker doesn't make sense. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Nolle, Andover Intel

Note these ops issues before you deploy with Docker containers

Docker regularly updates its containerization offering, but it's not click-to-deploy ready for production. Ops professionals should acknowledge these points before deploying Docker containers. Continue Reading

By

• Tom Nolle, Andover Intel

DevOps lab: Build Vagrant VMs to learn immutable infrastructure

This article is part of a series to help IT ops professionals learn DevOps by building a home lab. In this first step, a cluster of Vagrant VMs represents immutable infrastructure. Continue Reading

By

• Alastair Cooke

Learn DevOps techniques and tools in this home lab setup

This DevOps lab uses Linux VMs and Docker containers to teach administrators the basics of immutable infrastructure, configuration automation and other modern IT concepts. Continue Reading

By

• Alastair Cooke

LinuxKit, Moby push developers toward collaborative systems

Docker offers two new projects: a toolkit for building secure, lean and portable Linux subsystems and a way for developers to collaborate on interchangeable components. Continue Reading

By

• Darryl K. Taft

Shipyard floats a Docker GUI for easier container management

Deploying new Docker images is the easy part; managing and reporting on those instances is tricky. IT teams can use the Shipyard GUI to stop, start, orchestrate and manage Docker. Continue Reading

By

• Stuart Burns

The future of containerization goes more abstract

Containers have benefits over VMs in the data center, but the future of containerization is broader than that. Continue Reading

By

• Clive Longbottom

Secure Docker on Linux or Windows platforms

With Docker appearing in businesses of all shapes and sizes, security is a concern for many IT admins. Here's how to secure Docker on the container or the host machine. Continue Reading

By

• Brad Casey

The real future of IT infrastructure lies in abstraction

Future IT infrastructure will be so abstracted from the applications using it that, while always a misnomer, serverless computing will be a reality. Continue Reading

By

• Keith Townsend, The CTO Advisor LLC

Modern open source systems management

The open source sector abounds with configuration management, monitoring and analytics, CI/CD tools and more to arm IT teams against failure in complex apps and infrastructure. Continue Reading

By

• Austin Allen, TechTarget
• Meredith Courtemanche, Director of Editorial Training
• Michelle Boisvert, Executive Editor

DevOps automation boosts Rosetta Stone's app delivery

The language learning company uses multiple tools to make its DevOps environment run smoothly, but Docker has been the key to streamlining application releases. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Container orchestration for a new breed of IT

PaaS offerings such as Heroku, RedHat OpenShift and Cloud Foundry have always used containers under the covers, but as containers move toward production use outside of PaaS in the cloud, they're being deployed in clusters of server infrastructure that are orchestrated to automate the deployment of containers. So is container orchestration right for IT? Well, that depends.

Beth Pariseau's feature this month, 'A New Day for PaaS' analyzes the way IT views PaaS, and how it's evolving. On the other hand, IT pros must dish out reality every once in a while to the business side, and often 'live on the edge' according to Alan Earls. But life on the edge can be dangerous, and it isn't just a figurative turn of phrase anymore, it's a physical location.

Both these stories, and much more, including columns from Bob Plankers and Mike Matchett, and what enterprise IT is thinking about VMware in the May issue of Modern Infrastructure.

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