In defense of the pet container, part 2: Wrappers, aggregates and models, oh my

In our first post defending the pet container, we looked at the challenge of complexity facing modern software stacks and one way that containers address this challenge through aggregation. In essence, the Docker “wrapper” consolidates the next level of the stack, much like RPM did at the component level, but aggregation is just the beginning of what the project provides.

If we take a step back and look at the Docker project in context, there are four aspects that contribute to its exceptional popularity:

1. it simplifies the way users interact with the kernel, for features we have come to call Linux containers;
2. it’s a tool and format for aggregate packaging of software stacks to be deployed into containers;
3. it is a model for layering generations of changes on top of each other in a single inheritance model;
4. It adds a transport for these aggregate packages.

These aspects of containers have triggered triggered a full paradigm shift in how we look at the operating system (OS), one driven by Red Hat and many other IT leaders contributing to the Docker project. The usual squabbles over positioning and control that come with such a shift notwithstanding, the future of the OS is defined by containerization.

Read the entire article here, In defense of the pet container, part 2: Wrappers, aggregates and models, oh my