I think at this moment docker does looks cool, but doesn't provide much value at this time. Some people are using it just for packaging their apps, but that's s

I think at this moment docker does looks cool, but doesn't provide much value at this time. Some people are using it just for packaging their apps, but that's something that was already solved or supposed to be solved by the language that is used. The direction where it is going is to create an "internet operating system" you upload your application and don't care on which server it is running. Currently that above problem has not been solved yet, and what we have is just bunch of tools to put them together and DIY. The real power of this will come, once cloud providers will allow you to simply upload the images without having to build that infrastructure yourself. I think you're right to fall back to ansible / puppet / chef, because this technology is simply not ready yet. This is especially true if you're using public cloud (and while you can make it work in AWS, it will cost you more; both due to amount of effort, but also due to overhead imposed by it. Remember, AWS still charges you by VM). There might be some benefits of using it right now when you have your own datacenter with physical machines. It could provide costs savings, compared to running your apps on dedicated physical servers or even using VMs.