A Linux container is a set of one or more processes that are isolated from the rest of the system. All the files necessary to run them are provided from a distinct image, meaning that Linux containers are portable and consistent as they move from development, to testing, and finally to production. This makes them much quicker than development pipelines that rely on replicating traditional testing environments.
Linux containers are technologies that allow you to package and isolate applications with their entire runtime environment for all of the files necessary to run. This makes it easy to move the contained application between environments (dev, test, production, etc.) while retaining full functionality.
Containers are also an important part of IT security. By building security into the container pipeline and defending your infrastructure, you can make sure your containers are reliable, scalable, and trusted.
Containers behave like a virtual machine. To the outside world, they can look like their own complete system. But unlike a virtual machine, rather than creating a whole virtual operating system, containers don't need to replicate an entire operating system, only the individual components they need in order to operate.
It gives a significant performance boost and reduces the size of the application. They also operate much faster, as unlike traditional virtualization the process is essentially running natively on its host, just with an additional layer of protection around it.
Why are containers used?
Imagine you’re developing an application. You do your work on a laptop and your environment has a specific configuration. Other developers may have slightly different configurations. The application you’re developing relies on that configuration and is dependent on specific libraries, dependencies, and files. Meanwhile, your business has development and production environments which are standardized with their own configurations and their own sets of supporting files. You want to emulate those environments as much as possible locally, but without all of the overhead of recreating the server environments. So, how do you make your app work across these environments, pass quality assurance, and get your app deployed without massive headaches, rewriting, and break-fixing? and The answer is "containers".
The container that holds your application has the necessary libraries, dependencies, and files so that you can move it through production without all of the nasty side effects. In fact, the contents of a container image can be thought of as an installation of a Linux distribution because it comes complete with RPM packages, configuration files, etc. But, container image distribution is a lot easier than installing new copies of operating systems. Crisis averted–everyone’s happy.
What about container security?
Containers are popular, but how safe are they? There are a lot of moving parts to container security—you need to protect the container pipeline and application; the deployment environment(s) and infrastructure, and you need a plan for integrating with enterprise security tools and policies.
Container add security by isolating applications from other applications on a host operating system, but simply containerizing an application isn't enough to keep it secure. Dan Walsh, a computer security expert known for his work on SELinux, explains some of the ways that developers are working to make sure Docker and other container tools are making sure containers are secure, as well as some of the security features currently within Docker, and how they function.
Comments
Post a Comment