MANAGING

DOCKER
CONTAINERS
ACROSS
CLOUDS:
How a Cloud Management Platform Helps

The Role of Container Orchestration
As organizations begin to deploy more containers, they may also leverage container orchestration tools,
such as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, or Apache Mesos. These tools help to provision containers, place
containers on the right hosts, and discover and connect services running in the containers.

Managing Containers with RightScale

RightScale provides the ability for both digital and traditional enterprises to orchestrate, manage,
and govern their applications whether containerized or not across any infrastructure resource pool.
We call this universal cloud management, and it includes support to manage any public and private
cloud as well as to cloud-enable virtual and bare-metal environments through a cloud appliance that
adds cloud-like capabilities.

The New World of Containers

While Linux container technologies have been around for many years, Docker has brought
together a powerful set of tools that make it easy to build, version, deploy, and share containers.
Using Docker provides several benefits to development and IT teams:

1 Speed development with simplified packaging of apps and more agility to iterate quickly.
2 Improve quality and reliability by ensuring consistency among development, test, staging,
and production environments and simplifying scalability.
3 Offer portability among different resource pools including desktop, virtualized, bare metal,
and cloud.
4 Improve performance by speeding lifecycle operations (boot, stop, start) and increasing runtime
performance to near that of bare metal.
5 Achieve higher tenant density on a single host.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
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Seven Ways to Use RightScale with Docker
For workloads that are running in containers, RightScale complements your use of Docker.
You can use RightScale to:

1 Deploy and manage Docker hosts.

2 Deploy orchestration solutions.

3 Monitor Docker hosts.

4 Auto-scale Docker hosts.

5 Discover and monitor running containers and images.

6 Provision container-based workloads through a self-service portal.

7 Automate infrastructure for software development lifecycle (SDLC) and continuous integration

and delivery (CI/CD) processes.

RightScale works in conjunction with Docker, SDLC, and CI/CD tools.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 3
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
Deploy and Manage Docker Hosts
Containers require a host environment. The infrastructure where the containers are deployed needs
to be configured and managed as a set of Docker hosts, which are likely to be running alongside
non-containerized applications or services. RightScale ServerTemplates provide a centralized and
standardized way for you to automate the deployment and configuration of all your Docker hosts.

Docker ServerTemplates can automate your Docker-centric setup such as enabling transport-
layer security (TLS) for secure communication with clients, mounting storage to hold Dockers
voluminous data files, and orchestrating applications running in containers with those running on
the host. You can also tag servers to indicate that they are Docker hosts, which allows operations
teams to easily find, view, and maintain servers that are being used as Docker hosts. Docker
ServerTemplates can automatically load appropriate containers for a particular host. Lastly, youll
need to perform ongoing operational tasks or maintenance on your Docker hosts. You may need
to pull new images, add or remove services and containers, update the versions of the Docker
engine, patch the underlying host for security updates, or perform other cleanup tasks. RightScale
ServerTemplates can automate these tasks as well.

Deploy Container Orchestration Solutions

Some Docker users may choose to use container orchestration or scheduling solutions in addition
to Docker. These tools will automatically deploy (or schedule) containers to run on a pool of
Docker hosts. Orchestration solutions are composed of one or more master nodes that then control
a set of worker nodes that actually run your containers. Each node will run the Docker engine
thereby becoming a Docker host and will also run an agent for the particular orchestration tool
(in the case of Swarm, the Docker engine also acts as the agent).

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 4
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
RightScale + Cluster Managers

As shown in the image above, RightScale can automate the deployment of a pool of Docker hosts
that is a prerequisite for setting up the the orchestration solution. RightScale can then be used to
deploy and configure the necessary master and worker nodes in the cluster.

Monitor Docker Hosts

Once you establish a Docker host, setting up monitoring and alerting are critical. Beyond standard
monitoring metrics, youll want to establish additional metrics and alerts that are relevant in
a Docker environment. For example, youll want to monitor the disk space consumed by data
volumes, the frequency of container restarts or failed executions, the ports in use by the containers,
the number of running containers, and other metrics.

You may also want to monitor the count of running containers on a host over time so that you
can measure your success in increasing utilization. Disk space can also become an issue on
Docker hosts because as containers are de-provisioned, they can leave artifacts that slowly eat
up disk space. By monitoring disk space and creating corresponding RightScale alerts, you can
automatically trigger Docker cleanup utilities such as docker-gc to perform necessary cleanup.

In addition, RightScale can provide monitoring of services or applications running inside containers.
Using the RightScale API, you can dynamically define and set up application-specific monitoring
and alerting for applications or services as containers are created and destroyed. This enables a
single source of truth for your monitoring and alerting needs across containerized and traditionally
deployed applications.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 5
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
Auto-Scale Your Pool of Docker Hosts
As you begin to use your pool of Docker hosts, you may need to increase the size of the pool so
that you can run more containers, or you may need to decrease the size of the pool if you are not
using all of the capacity. Even if you are using container orchestration tools, the orchestrator can
only place containers within the set of hosts that have been provisioned and added to its cluster.

RightScale can monitor the Docker hosts within your cluster and automatically increase or
decrease the pool of hosts based on monitoring metrics such as host memory utilization and load
average. RightScale can also configure hosts that are added by auto-scaling to become members
of a cluster.

Discover and Monitor Running Containers and Images

Once you have containers running on hosts, RightScale will discover the containers, images, and
versions that are running on each host. The RightScale Container Manager provides an interface
to see and search for information about your containers.

Examples of use cases for the RightScale Container Manager include:

See which Docker images are running on which hosts for all your deployments.

Track which versions of your Docker images are used and where they are deployed.

Find containers based on naming patterns used by orchestration tools.

Find all containers running a particular image that needs to be updated.

Troubleshoot issues by seeing which containers are running on a particular host.
Get a holistic view of CPU and memory utilization across all your containers.
Drill down to detailed monitoring metrics on each individual container.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 6
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
Provision Container-Based Workloads Through a Self-Service Portal
While developers may often provision Docker containers through Docker tools, there will be cases
where container-based workloads will need to be provisioned by others. RightScale Self-Service
enables IT teams to orchestrate provisioning of containerized, partially containerized, and
non-containerized workloads from an easy-to-use portal.

For example, a three-tier workload deployed to the cloud might need to orchestrate a
non-containerized database, a containerized app tier, a cloud service for the load balancer,
and a third-party DNS server.

Heterogeneous Workload Example

Other sample use cases for self-service provisioning of container-based workloads include:

End-user provisioning of applications such as WordPress delivered in a container.

Standard LAMP stack for development in containers.

Demo systems in containers for easy deployment by sales.

Training systems in containers for deployment by training team.

Commonly used dev or test tools in containers.

. . . and more.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 7
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
Automating Infrastructure In Your SDLC and CI/CD Processes
With many organizations implementing automated software development processes such as
continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), there is a parallel requirement to
automate the provisioning, scaling, and teardown of infrastructure resources that support code
delivery. Developers need access to complete application environments as they create and debug
code, QA organizations need automated test environments, and operations teams need to create
staging and production infrastructure. RightScale enables the automation of infrastructure through
an infrastructure-as-code approach and provides APIs for integration with the existing tooling
being used to manage code assets, from GitHub to testing tools to CI tools solutions.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 8
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
With the advent of Docker, containers offer a new option for packaging the code artifacts that are
produced at each stage in the SDLC. These containerized code artifacts can then be automatically
pulled and deployed on Docker hosts that are provisioned on any cloud or non-cloud environment
through RightScale.

Case Study: Saving Time and Money with Docker

RightScale converted 48 of 52 services that run our SaaS platform to instead run in Docker containers
on cloud-based instances. In doing so, we increased host density, which reduced the number of cloud
instances by 55 percent and the instance cost by 53 percent. We also enabled more development and
testing on developers laptop computers, which increased agility and speed to market. Developers can
now easily set up, debug, test, and integrate environments that assemble the collection of services that
they need. Our operations team has also increased its efficiency and reduced the configurations needed
to support the wide variety of services that comprise the RightScale platform.

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 9
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..
About RightScale
RightScale Universal Cloud Management enables leading enterprises to accelerate delivery
of cloud-based applications that engage customers and drive top-line revenue while optimizing
cloud usage to reduce risk and costs. With RightScale, IT organizations can deliver instant access to
a portfolio of public, private, and hybrid cloud services across business units and development teams
while maintaining enterprise control. RightScale Consulting Services help companies develop cloud
strategies, deliver cloud projects, and optimize cloud usage. Since 2007, leading enterprises including
Audi, Pinterest, and Yellow Pages Group have launched millions of servers through RightScale.

To find out more, visit www.rightscale.com

Contact us to find out how RightScale can help you take advantage of Docker and cloud
to accelerate your application delivery.
+1.888.989.1856 (toll free)
+1.805.500.4164
sales@rightscale.com

Managing Docker Containers Across Clouds: How a Cloud Management Platform Helps
2016 RightScale, Inc. All rights reserved. RightScale is a registered trademark of RightScale, Inc. 10
All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners..