At Dockercon 16 the Docker team introduced a major new feature in Docker 1.12 – built-in orchestration. This is a huge new feature. Docker is essentially taking away complexity in the orchestration of Docker services and containers. We were listening in on the Dockercon 16 live webcast and have the highlights.
There are four main components in the Docker 1.12 built-in orchestration: swarm mode, service API, cryptographic node identity, and a built-in routing mesh.
Swarm mode essentially delivers an easy to deploy containerized services to multiple nodes. Instead of having to manage a separate Docker Swarm, it is now available directly from Docker Engine 1.12. Swarm mode ensures that if a physical node goes down containers can be scheduled and brought online on different nodes.
The Docker team showed off the setup of a swarm directly from Engine 1.12. They also showed how the accompanying service API allows for managing the cluster.
Docker is taking away a lot of the pain of running large clusters. Each node is given a cryptographic node identity. There is end-to-end encryption of both application data and management traffic. Docker takes care of automated key rotation and node revocation, both of which would require significant setup time if done manually.
The fourth feature is the built-in routing mesh. There is the ability to support load balancers that can handle tens of thousands of containers moving around constantly. We have seen the Docker team work on networking in the past and this is where we are starting to see huge dividends.
Docker is also releasing Docker for AWS and Docker for Azure. The key features here are that the Docker service management is now integrated into AWS and Azure infrastructure features such as load balancers and firewalls.
There is certainly a lot going on on the Docker side, but this may be the release that makes Docker clusters available to an even wider audience. It is clear that the team is working to make the back-end infrastructure as automated as possible.
You can read more about the feature on the official Docker blog.
