Containers are gaining steam in the enterprise. They enable developers to package an entire runtime environment—including an application, its dependencies, libraries and other binaries, and configuration files—in a portable and streamlined way. The idea of containers isn't new, but container technology combined with the cloud can be a game changer. Companies can effectively marry the two with a robust cloud data center framework such as OpenStack. Indeed, in an OpenStack user survey, more than half of respondents said they are interested in using containers in conjunction with their OpenStack clouds for production uses. "To run containers, you need more than a container runtime and packaging format," said Lars Herrmann, general manager for Integrated Solutions at Red Hat, which is one of the biggest contributors to and supporters of the open-source OpenStack community. "Instead, you need an entire enterprise container infrastructure—a new 'stack' for running containers in enterprise data centers and public clouds. That's what OpenStack provides." ffers up a number of ways organizations can benefit big from running containers on OpenStack.
- eWeek