Exploring the move from virtual machines to containerisation
Until now, virtual machines (VMs) have been a core technology for optimising infrastructure resources. However, digital transformation is creating enormous data loads, and the requirement for business applications to run faster than ever before is driving a shift towards containerisation.
VMs have historically been used to running what seems like multiple computers, potentially with different operating systems on the hardware of a single physical server. In order to gain scale, VMs require significant CPU and memory to run efficiently.
They also have a complex software development lifecycle because of the implementation of virtual copies and the resources needed to manage them. This can make designing solutions that embrace hybrid clouds challenging.
Containerisation resolves many of these challenges because it provides one single platform that lets developers run multiple applications with the shared portion of the operating system being read-only. Containerisation is based on standardised software units (containers) that encompass all code and dependencies, such as binaries, libraries, and configuration files, for an application to run.
Containerised software is highly reliable because it can work across multiple computing and cloud environments. This makes containers lightweight so that multiple containers can be deployed on a single server. It resolves the need to dedicate an entire server to a single application.
Containerisation is a rapidly growing solution because it lets organisations scale much faster and more easily without the need for more server space. A best-in-class containerisation solution lets developers build, automate, and secure cloud-native applications with the flexibility to run on any kubernetes distribution, any cloud, or any on-premise infrastructure.
Not only does this save development time and costs, but it also lets organisations scale more quickly and efficiently as business needs change. Using containers-as-a-service (CaaS) helps developers build, deploy, and update business applications more quickly through the agility and portability of software containers.
Container orchestration gives developers the agility of a public cloud to provision, configure, deploy and manage containers at scale, with the reliability and security of on-premises infrastructure.
The key benefits of containerisation for businesses include:
● Developers are empowered to build and update business applications much faster and with higher reliability while maintaining security and data protection
● Business agility is increased through a greater ability to scale at speed
● Automated kubernetes data protection protects containerised applications with optimised cloud-native disaster recovery and backups for all kubernetes workloads.
The data explosion and rapid growth of kubernetes makes it more challenging for organisations to use existing enterprise storage and data protection solutions, as well as virtual machines, to secure and operate business applications.
Seismic shifts in the business environment during the past two years have necessitated a next-generation solution that supports greater levels of business agility while mitigating risks and achieving better cost efficiencies. Containerisation meets this need for organisations no matter the size of the business or IT architecture. While there will always be a place for VMs, containerisation will increasingly become the heart of cloud-native applications in the very near future.
