Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship and run distributed applications. Consisting of Docker Engine, a portable, lightweight runtime and packaging tool and Docker Hub, a cloud service for sharing applications and automating workflows, Docker enables apps to be quickly assembled from components and eliminates the friction among the development, QA and production environments. As a result, IT can ship faster and run the same app, unchanged, on laptops, data center VMs and any cloud.
What can I use Docker for?
Faster delivery of your applications
Docker allows your developers to develop on local containers that contain your applications and services. It can then integrate into a continuous integration and deployment workflow.
Deploying and scaling more easily
Docker’s container-based platform allows for highly portable workloads. Docker containers can run on a developer’s local host, on physical or virtual machines in a data center, or in the Cloud. Docker’s portability and lightweight nature also make dynamically managing workloads easy. You can use Docker to quickly scale up or tear down applications and services. Docker’s speed means that scaling can be near real time.
Achieving higher density and running more workloads
Docker is lightweight and fast. It provides a viable, cost-effective alternative to hypervisor-based virtual machines. This is especially useful in high density environments: for example, building your own Cloud or Platform-as-a-Service. But it is also useful for small and medium deployments where you want to get more out of the resources you have.
In this video, Robert and Steve talks about and explain what containers are and how Visual Studio developers can take advantage of them.
Some of the questions answered in this video are
- What is Docker
- What are containers
- What are Windows Containers
- Why do I care about Docker and containers
- What problems does it design to solve
- What role Visual Studio plays using containers and Docker