06/19/2019
What is Container Technology?
Traditional server virtualization creates a virtual server on top of a physical server host OS, whereas, container technology separates the host OS use-space to provide an isolated application operating environment.
The overhead is smaller and lighter compared to server virtualization. With high portability this technology can be used to package and carry the contents configured in containers. the container technology is becoming a mainstream technology that streamlines application development. This famous software that provides container execution environment (container engine) is “Docker”.
Container Orchestration
In a 1 host-1 container environment, Docker alone is fine, but in an actual system, it is necessary to execute and manage containers across multiple servers. Container orchestration provides features like container management, live monitoring and load balancing which solves this problem. Currently the software for realizing container orchestration, “kubernetes(k8s)” (developed and open sourced by Google) has established de facto status, and cloud operators have started their own container service that also promote the provision of container services based on k8s.
Container Application to Legacy System
One of the main reasons why containers are gaining attention is their affinity with digital architectures such as cloud native and micro services. In order to maximise the benefits of their architecture, containers need to be light weighted and highly portable. However, even when containerizing conventional legacy systems and monolithic applications, the following advantages can be expected.
Improving efficiency in environment maintenance operation
Containerization enables quick and resource-saving construction of application operating environments, making it possible for developers to have on-demand development environments that are difficult with server virtualization. As a result, it enables to improve the efficiency of environmental maintenance and helps reduce problems caused by environmental differences.
Advancing infrastructure and automation
Container orchestration provides the ability to automate containerized application scaling, failure detection and recovery function, and securing non disruptive deployment capabilities such as rolling updates. By making full use of container orchestration, it enables us to achieve advanced infrastructure and automation of legacy systems without the infrastructure design implementation and operation maintenance that were previously required to have these functions.
Hybrid cloud
AS the evolving private cloud, the trend of the cloud is turning to a hybrid cloud combining private and public cloud. Hybrid cloud is required to enable the movement of application between the clouds, but containerization provides an application operation environment that does not depend on infrastructure layer. By containerizing legacy system and moving to a hybrid cloud, flexible infrastructure choices are available according to changes in system workloads and business needs. IT cost optimization and business responsiveness are highly expected.
Legacy Digital Integration
As mentioned above, even when containers are applied to legacy system, benefits such as high efficiency in infrastructure operation and cost reduction are expected. NTT DATA provides technologies that enable digitization while utilizing existing IT assets as Legacy Digital Integration including the container technology introduced above.
