Docker, Kubernetes, and Helm

What are they and why should you use them?

Photo by ammiel jr on Unsplash

Have you ever deployed code from one environment to another only to have to spend time reconfiguring files, re-downloading libraries and redoing work because the operating system or general environment was slightly different from the development environment?

Even porting different applications into new environments used to be surprisingly time-consuming.

Not only that, applications could be limited to the OS they could run on and required much more resources.

Note: Based on Alexandre Sattamini question. Docker is available to run on Windows Server 2016 and up. Prior to that you did have to run docker on a VM on Windows Server 2012.

With the popularization of containers, much of this has changed.

What is a Container and Containerization?

Simply put, a container packs up code along with its dependencies so it can be run reliably and efficiently over different environments. Containerization refers to the bundling of an application along with the libraries, dependencies and configuration files it needs to run it efficiently across multiple computing environments.

Benefits of Containerization

We want to discuss three technologies that you will probably run into as a developer. But first, in case you haven’t used containers before, let’s look at some of their benefits:

• Resource Efficiency: One major benefit is efficiency of resources. Containers do not require a separate OS, so they take up fewer resources. Some might argue that container offer similar benefits to virtual machines. However, virtual machines are often gigabytes in size. Containers are usually in the megabyte range.
• Platform Independence: The portability of containers is another huge benefit. All the dependencies of the application are wrapped, allowing you to easily run applications on different environments for both public and virtual servers. This gives organizations a great deal of flexibility, speeding up the development process and allowing developers to easily switch to other cloud environments.
• Effective Resource…