We use docker extensively to ship a large and complex legacy platform that was designed to run as a hosted service, but was transformed into an on-premise product.
The system is composed of several components originally designed to run on separate VMs for security reasons. Luckily, we were able to translate VM <-> docker container, so now each component has its own Dockerfile + shell script for booting up and providing runtime configuration.
Docker helps us solve several problems:
* A canonical build. It provides a way to configure the build system, fetch all dependencies and execute a reproducible build on different machines/environments. It's also used as documentation when engineers have no clue, where settings/parameters come from.
* A super fast build pipeline and release repository. We use maven -> nexus, docker -> docker-registry, vagrant -> local export for a completely automated way to bootstrap an ovf-file that can be deployed at customer site. Releases for the old platform were not automated and took the previous teams weeks (!) on a single platform.
* A way to restrict resources. Given some security constraints from the product, lxc + docker helps us restrict memory and networking.
* Shipping updates. We deliver automated updates through a hosted docker registry for customers who open up the appliance to the internet. Previous teams were not able deliver updates in time for a single hosted platform. We can now ship new releases and have them deployed at several customers data-centers in a matter of hours.
We have been using docker in production for almost a year now and despite headaches in the beginning it's been absolutely worth it.
The system is composed of several components originally designed to run on separate VMs for security reasons. Luckily, we were able to translate VM <-> docker container, so now each component has its own Dockerfile + shell script for booting up and providing runtime configuration.
Docker helps us solve several problems:
* A canonical build. It provides a way to configure the build system, fetch all dependencies and execute a reproducible build on different machines/environments. It's also used as documentation when engineers have no clue, where settings/parameters come from.
* A super fast build pipeline and release repository. We use maven -> nexus, docker -> docker-registry, vagrant -> local export for a completely automated way to bootstrap an ovf-file that can be deployed at customer site. Releases for the old platform were not automated and took the previous teams weeks (!) on a single platform.
* A way to restrict resources. Given some security constraints from the product, lxc + docker helps us restrict memory and networking.
* Shipping updates. We deliver automated updates through a hosted docker registry for customers who open up the appliance to the internet. Previous teams were not able deliver updates in time for a single hosted platform. We can now ship new releases and have them deployed at several customers data-centers in a matter of hours.
We have been using docker in production for almost a year now and despite headaches in the beginning it's been absolutely worth it.