Common Container standards:

Past, Present & Future

 

Vincent Batts  @vbatts

$> finger $(whoami)
Login: vbatts                           Name: Vincent Batts
Directory: /home/vbatts                 Shell: /bin/bash
Such mail.
Plan:
OHMAN
$> id -Gn
devel opencontainers docker appc redhat golang slackware

So,

Why, Containers?

Single Application
Full System
But Not a VM
Except Maybe a VM
Pods of applications
Labels of services
Non-root

Non-root Full systems?

Desktop Applications
But Wait,

What does "container" mean to you?

STANDARDS!

Standard

/ˈstandəd/

noun

something used as a measure, norm, or model in comparative evaluations

STANDARDS!

Areas to Standardize:
  • Packaging
  • Runtime
  • Networking
  • Cloud

Past

Packages

tar archives

*.deb or *.rpm

jar

gem

pod

module

egg

zip archives

tar archives

tar archives

tar archives

Past

*.dmg

*.msi

Runtime

Past

binaries?

ELF binaries?

WAR files

SysVinit

shell scripts

so many shell scripts

Network

Past

Hardware

shell scripts + telnet

custom

SDN

Cloud

Past

REST

SOAP

APIs of APIs

SOA

Present

Runtime

LXC

  • 2008
  • lxc specifc config

Docker

  • 2013
  • Docker specifc config and APIs

Present

Runtime

Application Container Spec (github.com/appc/spec)

  • December 2014
  • App Container Executor (ACE)
  • Several implementations, with rkt as the flagship
  • Specification

Present

Runtime

OpenContainer Runtime-Spec (github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec)

  • June 2015
  • Several Implementations, with runc as flagship
  • Specification
  • Currently v1.0.0-rc2

Present

Network

Container Networking Interface

(CNI - github.com/containernetworking/cni)

  • Used by RKT, kubernetes, OpenShift, Kurma, Cloud Foundry, RancherOS, usable with runC, and more
  • Simple to integrate with a process based workflow
  • December 2014
  • Specification and Library

Present

Network

Container Network Model

(CNM - Docker libnetwork)

  • Used by Docker Engine
  • April 2015

Present

Packaging

  • Docker specific format

Docker Image

  • Tight coupling with daemon version
  • Signing requires Docker notary integration
  • Image naming is Docker specific and bound to registries

Present

Packaging

  • December 2014
  • A number of independent tooling

Application Container Spec (github.com/appc/spec)

  • App Container Image (ACI)
  • Addresses Fully-Qualified-Naming, image discovery, signing, content addressibility, and versioned schema

Present

Packaging

  • April 2016
  • Pulled from Docker-1.10 and Registry v2 format
  • Content addressibility

OpenContainer Image-Spec (github.com/opencontainers/image-spec)

  • Signable. Possibility to have naming and discovery.
  • Currenly releasing v1.0.0-rc1
  • Gaining support from rkt, flatpak, skopeo, cri-o and more

Present

Cloud

Cloud Native Computing Foundation (https://cncf.io)

  • Kubernetes orchestration donated by Google
  • Prometheus monitoring donated
Why More Standards?!

Really great question. Thought you might ask ...


The package wars of deb vs rpm set back the broad adoption of Linux

xkcd.com/927

Future

Continued adoption

Verification and certification of integrations/implemenations

Tooling to further distribution and discovery

Call to Action!

Define your use-cases first

Ensure your container integration touchpoint stay generic,

to avoid lock-in to a particular platform.

Get involved in the conversations

PoC tooling for your integration

Thanks!

Vincent Batts

@vbatts| vbatts@redhat.com