Why I like containers for everything

I want to explain why running everything in containers is an improvement over install all your required software on a server. How containers can help us build better quality software faster.

The question

A short while ago a colleague asked me “why did you setup that project with docker?”. All I could say was “its simple and easy”. My colleague replied “yeah but just setting up all the required software on the server is also easy, so whats the benefit”. I could not answer. I just like containers and for me, setting them up and using them feels straight forward. But is it so straight forward for others and am I not just forcing my pet projects on my colleagues because I like this approach and they just have to follow along. This got me thinking. What are the benefits of using containers over the traditional - install all your required software on the server and be done with it - approach.

Software consistency from development to production

This is one of the main benefits already, the versions we use in development are the exact same versions that will be used on production. When we were on the traditional approach we usually had differences between what we were running in our development VM versus what was running on the target production server. We also frequently had differences between how the development machine was configured versus what the configuration was on a production machine. Se we could end up with problems in production that were not reproducible in development. When we run all our stuff in containers we avoid this type of issues. The stack in development and in production is exactly the same.

Easy updates flowing from development to production

When we have updates in our underlying software stack, we first get those updates in the containers we use in development. If we would have inconsistencies or encounter problems causing our software to break in major ways we can quickly go back to the previous stack, and no harm done. This also means we already have been running on the ‘new’ stack for a while in different development setups and a staging environment which will give us big certainty the stack will not cause any problems in production. This type of consistency we never had with the development VM approach.

Use the software version that suits your needs

We use Ubuntu as host for all our servers. Our hosting company chooses to follow the LTS versions and when a new server is installed you get the latest available LTS version. In some case we want to use different versions than the ones available in the repositories of the distribution. That is where containers come into play. You can use the version of a certain piece of software that suits your project without the potential to completely fuck up your server as we occasionally had when we were using some PPA to suit our software’s need.

Setup speed

Using something that is already fully configured and installed is a lot faster than having to setup a new VM and provision that VM. We already tackled that problem a bit by using pre-provisioned VM’s, but that reduced the ease to keep up with some other updates.

Ease of deployment

Have to setup a new environment? Easy, just start a new set of containers on the same or other hardware you already have running. This allows for flexible and disposable one-time-needed environments to test for example a new feature that needs feedback and because of that is not yet merged in your main branches.

Allows easier and more automation

Because of the extra flexibility building and running software in containers allows us to automate a lot of processes a lot easier. Especially when we start talking about disposable environments and one-shot environment that have a short lifetime for a very specific purpose.

Conclusion

What makes containers more useful to me and better than just install the software on the server and be done with it, is the following: consistency across all environments, ease of choosing the software (version) that suits your needs, the flexibility given to have disposable environments without much overhead. In the end its the flexibility that appeals to me.