Containers Add New Efficiency To Cloud Computing
October 23, 2013
Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Michael C. Daconta.
Many virtual machines are being spun up in the cloud to run a single application. Often, the resources consumed by that application are dwarfed by the size of the operating system in terms of memory, disk space and CPU utilization. So why run an entire OS just to run one application? That is one problem virtual containers were created to solve.
Containers-as-a-service is a type of infrastructure-as-a-service specifically geared toward efficiently running a single application. A container is a form of operating system virtualization that is more efficient than typical hardware virtualization. It provides the necessary computing resources to run an application as if it is the only application running in the operating system — in other words, with a guarantee of no conflicts with other application containers running on the same machine. For agencies and enterprises moving applications to the cloud, the containers represent a smarter and more economical way to move to the cloud…
In traditional hardware virtualization, a hypervisor (either software or bare metal) can run one or more guest operating systems. Each operating system acts as if it is in control of the entire machine. With containers (which are currently implemented on Linux, BSD and Solaris), applications can be virtualized more efficiently and run as if they control the entire OS user space. For example, a container can be rebooted, have root access, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files…
Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/government/cloud-saas/containers-add-new-efficiency-to-cloud-c/240163026