Container usage is now being adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small startups to companies with huge, established microservices platforms.
At Data Summit 2019 Jeff Fried, director of product management, Intersystems and BA Insight, MIT, and Joe Carroll, product specialist, InterSystems, presented their session, “Understanding Database Containerization,” focusing on helping practitioners navigate the minefield of database containerization and avoid some of the major pitfalls that can occur.
The sixth annual Data Summit conference is being held in Boston, May 21-22, 2019, with pre-conference workshops held on May 20.
“Not only do containers and databases work well together, they can be essential,” Fried said.
Containers are the fastest growing cloud enabling technology, according to Fried.
Docker containers allow applications to be immutable, portable, and scriptable. The idea isn’t new, Fried explained, VMs allow users to act as something similar.
“A container has the same idea but you are operating things in their own environments,” Fried said. “They are smaller and quicker. Containers also have an amazing ecosystem.”
Operational benefits of containerization include portability, scalability, fast deployment, and more. The business benefits from the agility, cost savings, and customer satisfaction, he said.
Tensions exist around using containers, Carroll explained. Containers were originally developed with data being disposable.
Although developers love a broad system of tools, it can be a nightmare for operations people.
“For people who are concerned about data governance and security they have to know what’s running in their environments,” Carroll said.
Enterprise data is vital to lives, wallets, and/or the business. It needs data persistence and data security, Carroll said.
“Instead of thinking about the tensions, we should change our mindset,” Carroll said.
Enterprise applications are in dire need of what containers can provide, Carroll noted.
“If you’re not running containers now, you will be,” Fried said. “It’s like a tsunami.”
Many Data Summit 2019 presentations are available for review at https://www.dbta.com/DataSummit/2019/Presentations.aspx.