Docker provides you with containers, which are sort of (but not quite) virtual machines. Why has Docker become so exciting in such a short period of time? What can you do with it? In this talk by Brian Goff, we learn what Docker is — and also what it can do for you, beyond what you might expect. If you’re new to Docker, or curious to know how it can help to improve your development or deployment, this talk should be of interest.
So you created a great new Web application! That’s great, and because it’s new, it’ll be easy to maintain… until it accumulates more and more features, and data, and bloat. Someone might then suggest that you refactor your system into one using “microservices,” breaking your large, uniform system into a number of smaller ones. Microservices can indeed be helpful, but it’s important to understand what they are, and what they do. In this talk, Martin Fowler describes what a microservice is (and what it isn’t), and what we’re likely to find as we migrate toward them in our Web applications.
Docker is sort of like a virtual machine, but not exactly. It lets you install applications more easily, and is extremely popular — but it’s hard for people to describe what it is, what it does, and why people are going ga-ga over it. In this talk, Andrew T. Baker introduces Docker to a Python audience. (So for example, he describes the Python-related Docker installations, and what extras they provide.) He explains how Docker simplifies application configuration and rollout, how it is different from (and similar to) other virtualization technologies, and where it’s going in the near future.
Ansible is a Python-based provisioning system, similar to the Ruby-based Chef and Puppet, which has been gaining popularity in devops. It’s written in Python, which means that if you want to use Ansible, you’ll need to know at least some (but not much) Python. In this talk, Glen Jarvis introduces Ansible, demonstrating how it works and how to use it for allocating and configuring servers.
I was first introduced to etcd about a year ago, when client showed me that it could be used for central configuration of servers. etcd 2.0 was recently released, and includes a number of features that make it even more attractive for production machines. In this talk, Brandon Philips (@brandonphilips) introduces etcd for those people who are new to it, describes how and where it can be used, and talks about the features that have been added in the latest release.
Chef is a popular system for configuring, deploying, and managing servers. In this talk from Big Ruby 2013, Joshua Timberman introduces Chef, and describes how it can be used in ways that you might not have expected.