Docker Orchestration Framework Gains Broad Support

Study Finds Network Admins Juggling Multiple Initiatives

As containers in Linux environments emerge as a lighter-weight alternative to hypervisors, it’s only logical that IT organizations would need a way to effectively manage those containers.

To that end, a community is now forming around Kubernetes, an open source manager for Docker containers developed by Google. Along with Docker and Google, Red Hat, IBM, Mesosphere, CoreOS SaltStack and even Microsoft have joined the Kubernetes community.

Scott Johnston, senior vice president of product at Docker, says Kubernetes provides a framework that makes it a lot simpler for IT organizations to manage multiple instances of Docker containers that could be distributed across multiple nodes.

For IT organizations thinking about adopting containers, being able to manage those containers is going to be a prerequisite to any thought about potentially abandoning hypervisors. The most interesting aspect of the Kubernetes announcement, of course, is the support from Microsoft.

As part of its efforts to entice organizations to run Linux workloads on Microsoft Azure, there is a need to manage those containers on the Microsoft cloud platform. That is, however, still a long way from being anywhere near supporting the notion of being able to run containers on Windows.

The good news is that as an emerging technology, the conversation surrounding containers is starting to move further away from where to employ them in favor of figuring out how best to manage them.