DockerCon 2015 – Moving faster while being more secure

Late last month I attended the Docker Conference in San Francisco and I was very pleased how far Docker has come. The crowds, the speakers and the technology created a fantastic atmosphere. DockerCon is a two-day, multi-track conference organized by Docker, Inc.

The conference featured topics and content covering all aspects of Docker and the surrounding ecosystem it is suitable for Developers, DevOps, Systems Administration and C-level executives. I was able to meet with the Docker ecosystem: contributors, developers, devops, ops, hackers, partners, and the Docker team, including the Founder, Solomon Hykes and CEO, Ben Golub.

Most of the major themes in this year’s conference were basically about being able to move faster, while being more secure. I discovered lots of interesting projects and ideas at DockerCon, and here are some of them:

• Project Orca which looks fascinating as it brings everything together for complete configuration, deployment, installation, and delivery of a full-stack application, managing pieces such as Docker itself, the Docker Engine, Docker Compose, Docker Swarm, Networking, all while providing a smooth user interface to do so.
• The US Government has publicly committed to adopt Docker across their entire US General Services Administration (GSA), this is huge when thinking about the 1 Trillion dollars that flow through that system.
• The new Docker Plugins mechanism, providing a standardized way to extend Docker with third-party functionality, for example to enhance network capabilities or volume management
• The formation of the Open Container Project to standardize container runtime and image formats, supported by Docker and by CoreOS
• The Docker Network project is the new networking system for Docker engine, opening up new communication channels between containers spanning hosts
• Project Notary which gives producers and consumers the assurance that the bits their consuming or producing are authentic and genuine.

Microsoft built an app for both Windows Server and Linux

Another interesting section of the event was with Mark Russinovich, CTO of the Microsoft Azure public cloud, using Docker to deploy an application on both the Windows Server and Linux operating systems. The front end was written in Asp.net, the middle tier in Node.js, and the back-end on top of MongoDB.

Docker and Microsoft have been working together on several initiatives, including bringing Docker container support to Windows Server. But this is “the first ever multiplatform container application,” according to Corey Sanders, partner director of program management at Microsoft. In addition to showcasing the new cross-platform container capabilities, Russinovich also set up a continuous-integration system for testing and running containers right from within Visual Studio Online.

Beyond that, the Azure Marketplace now features a Docker Trusted Registry virtual machine image, and the Azure Marketplace now allows people to deploy container-based applications from Docker Hub images right onto Azure. Russinovich even showed how you could deploy multi-container applications, like one featuring both WordPress and MySQL.

Adoption of Docker is growing at an unprecedented rate, and attendance at DockerCon proves it – last year there were 550 attendees, this year there were four times that many. At the same time the Docker ecosystem will continue to thrive and grow, and I believe that at the next Docker conference, we will see more success stories of running Docker in production. See you at DockerCon 2016!

Photo source: https://i0.wp.com/blog.docker.com/media/2015/04/DC-website-main-news-1.png?resize=350%2C200