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Docker founder here. Great! There is one question I would like to have answered, by you and you alone: if I'm using SmartOS, and therefore zones, and all my a

by Annatar 10y ago

Docker founder here. Great! There is one question I would like to have answered, by you and you alone: if I'm using SmartOS, and therefore zones, and all my applications and configurations are packaged into OS packages, and I use imgadm(1M), vmadm(1M), and Smart DataCenter (SDC), what do I need Docker for?

tinco 10y ago
Nothing. You've already spent all the time and effort that Docker would save you. Have fun maintaining OS packages.
- Annatar 10y ago
  As I wrote previously, the question is for the founder of Docker and him alone, but since you volunteered your opinion, I am extremely pleased to inform you that I love making OS packages and performing configuration management at scale that way. I especially enjoy being able to ask the operating system's software management subsystem exactly which configuration changes have been done to it, and get a precise response back. I enjoy it even more when I am able to perform mass in-place upgrades of configuration, on tens of thousands of systems, in parallel, because I'm performing configuration management using operating system packages, or simply destroy the system's boot block, reboot it, and have the network instantiate it, from bare metal to fully configured virtual servers ready to serve data, by just using Kickstart, JumpStart(TM), or SDC, without any additional code. No Chef. No Puppet. No cfxengine. No Salt. No Ansible. No Docker. No KVM. No XEN. No Kubernetes. No Mesos. No extra software or daemons required or needed, other than what ships with the OS. Fully isolated, virtualized UNIX servers. Servers are cattle, not pets. Deployments in up to 25 seconds. That was the challenge. And it was fun to solve. Have fun maintaining OS packages. Oh I am! It's incredibly satisfying to be able to run systems where no human has ever logged into, and no file has ever been manually modified, and all the files and all the changes are accounted for by the operating system. See also, not quite the same, but very much related and relevant to your comment: http://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/building-packages-at-scale.html http://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/building-packages-at-scale.ht... https://blog.nimbleci.com/2016/10/11/how-to-deploy-jenkins-completely-pre-configured/ https://blog.nimbleci.com/2016/10/11/how-to-deploy-jenkins-c... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12750685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12750685 Configuration management at scale, using an operating system's software management subsystem is the old, new-new thing. It is the foundation and the future of even more massive cloud computing. Now you'll be able to say someday in the future: "ha! I read that on Hacker News years ago!", and point to this post.
  - tinco 10y ago
    So what are you bugging shykes for? You have achieved everything Docker offers, and you had fun in the process. Seems like you're smart enough to realize that. Anyway, someday in the future I might look back on this and think "ha! someone put all that effort in even though NixOS already existed".
    - Annatar 10y ago
      So what are you bugging shykes for? All I did was ask a question. Is critical thinking, even just asking questions, undesirable now, unless someone is being praised to high heavens? Is that what we're down to now? "ha! someone put all that effort in even though NixOS already existed" SmartOS virtualization is based on Solaris zones, which existed long before people on GNU/Linux even realized that containers were the way to go. The groundwork, and my own work was laid down long before any of this became hype. Project Kevlar, nee zones was started around the same time as NixOS, and another participant already mentioned that large companies did large scale deployments and configuration management via OS packages, which is both true and correct.
      - tinco 10y ago
        You did not just ask a question as a form of critical thinking. You asked a question leading into a lecture on the technology you prefer. Docker is just a simple wrapper that reduces the amount of knowledge needed to run a containerized process. It did not become hype because of any technological advantage, it became hype because this old technology became accessible not just for the kind of people/companies that don't (can't) run enterprise class Solaris deployments, but also the kind that don't have 20 years of experience in making robust well managed deployments. Your process might seem easy and straightforward to you. But for the average developer and Linux enthousiast, there's not much that can the simplicity of the Dockerfile. Systemd or a more specialized system like Kubernetes to run the containers, and a simple script to provision your machine is all you need. You can pick all of this tech up in a few days and steadily grow into more advanced subjects like monitoring, logging, security. Anyway, you're not helping anyone by just saying "SmartOS is better than Docker+(list of redundant and unrelated other tech)", maybe instead show us a one-page tutorial on how to set up a SmartOS system with a webapp stack (i.e. LAMP, MEAN or RoR) that can be executed by a newbie without a creditcard, registration, trial or phone call.

by Annatar 10y ago

tinco 10y ago

Nothing. You've already spent all the time and effort that Docker would save you. Have fun maintaining OS packages.

Annatar 10y ago
As I wrote previously, the question is for the founder of Docker and him alone, but since you volunteered your opinion, I am extremely pleased to inform you that I love making OS packages and performing configuration management at scale that way. I especially enjoy being able to ask the operating system's software management subsystem exactly which configuration changes have been done to it, and get a precise response back. I enjoy it even more when I am able to perform mass in-place upgrades of configuration, on tens of thousands of systems, in parallel, because I'm performing configuration management using operating system packages, or simply destroy the system's boot block, reboot it, and have the network instantiate it, from bare metal to fully configured virtual servers ready to serve data, by just using Kickstart, JumpStart(TM), or SDC, without any additional code. No Chef. No Puppet. No cfxengine. No Salt. No Ansible. No Docker. No KVM. No XEN. No Kubernetes. No Mesos. No extra software or daemons required or needed, other than what ships with the OS. Fully isolated, virtualized UNIX servers. Servers are cattle, not pets. Deployments in up to 25 seconds. That was the challenge. And it was fun to solve. Have fun maintaining OS packages. Oh I am! It's incredibly satisfying to be able to run systems where no human has ever logged into, and no file has ever been manually modified, and all the files and all the changes are accounted for by the operating system. See also, not quite the same, but very much related and relevant to your comment: http://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/building-packages-at-scale.html http://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/building-packages-at-scale.ht... https://blog.nimbleci.com/2016/10/11/how-to-deploy-jenkins-completely-pre-configured/ https://blog.nimbleci.com/2016/10/11/how-to-deploy-jenkins-c... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12750685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12750685 Configuration management at scale, using an operating system's software management subsystem is the old, new-new thing. It is the foundation and the future of even more massive cloud computing. Now you'll be able to say someday in the future: "ha! I read that on Hacker News years ago!", and point to this post.
- tinco 10y ago
  So what are you bugging shykes for? You have achieved everything Docker offers, and you had fun in the process. Seems like you're smart enough to realize that. Anyway, someday in the future I might look back on this and think "ha! someone put all that effort in even though NixOS already existed".
  - Annatar 10y ago
    So what are you bugging shykes for? All I did was ask a question. Is critical thinking, even just asking questions, undesirable now, unless someone is being praised to high heavens? Is that what we're down to now? "ha! someone put all that effort in even though NixOS already existed" SmartOS virtualization is based on Solaris zones, which existed long before people on GNU/Linux even realized that containers were the way to go. The groundwork, and my own work was laid down long before any of this became hype. Project Kevlar, nee zones was started around the same time as NixOS, and another participant already mentioned that large companies did large scale deployments and configuration management via OS packages, which is both true and correct.
    - tinco 10y ago
      You did not just ask a question as a form of critical thinking. You asked a question leading into a lecture on the technology you prefer. Docker is just a simple wrapper that reduces the amount of knowledge needed to run a containerized process. It did not become hype because of any technological advantage, it became hype because this old technology became accessible not just for the kind of people/companies that don't (can't) run enterprise class Solaris deployments, but also the kind that don't have 20 years of experience in making robust well managed deployments. Your process might seem easy and straightforward to you. But for the average developer and Linux enthousiast, there's not much that can the simplicity of the Dockerfile. Systemd or a more specialized system like Kubernetes to run the containers, and a simple script to provision your machine is all you need. You can pick all of this tech up in a few days and steadily grow into more advanced subjects like monitoring, logging, security. Anyway, you're not helping anyone by just saying "SmartOS is better than Docker+(list of redundant and unrelated other tech)", maybe instead show us a one-page tutorial on how to set up a SmartOS system with a webapp stack (i.e. LAMP, MEAN or RoR) that can be executed by a newbie without a creditcard, registration, trial or phone call.