Tag: Docker

Apple Beefing Up Cloud Division With Spate of Hires
Apple has been on a hiring spree, bringing in some of the best cloud engineers money can buy.

While cloud computing may not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of the iPhone maker, the company has a large cloud presence. The App Store, Apple Music, iCloud Drive and file storage, as well as Apple TV+ are all part of the company’s cloud presence.

As Protocol reports, it’s unclear what the new hires are being brought on to tackle, although the sheer number and quality of the hires is impressive. According to Protocol, the list includes:
- Michael Crosby, one of a handful of ex-Docker engineers to join Apple this year. “Michael is who we can thank for containers as they exist today. He was the powerhouse engineer behind all of it,” said a former colleague who asked to remain anonymous.
- Arun Gupta, who joined Apple in February from AWS and is now leading Apple’s open-source efforts.
- Maksym Pavlenko, another former AWS employee who worked on its managed container services such as AWS Fargate.
- Francesc Campoy, an ex-Googler who will be working on Kubernetes for Apple.
It will be interesting to see what Apple has planned, and whether it is simply beefing up its existing services, or more directly going after mainstream cloud providers.
May 14, 2020
Microsoft Launches New Windows Server Preview

Microsoft announced the launch of its third Technical Preview of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016, which includes the release of the first public preview of Windows Server Containers as well as new Nano Server functionality and software-defined datacenter enhancements.

“Delivering applications quickly is key to staying competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment,” Microsoft says. “To respond, many organizations are looking for ways to accelerate how they move applications from development into production and continuously improve them to respond to business changes. DevOps-oriented tools and processes, which offer agile innovation and faster time to market, are empowering both developers and IT to meet this demand and drive new levels of value to their business. Containers are increasingly seen as an ideal solution to embrace DevOps giving developers increased agility while reducing operations management challenges for IT.”

With Windows Server Containers, the company aims to bring such benefits to its customers.

“Windows Server Containers create a highly agile Windows Server environment, enabling you to accelerate the DevOps process to efficiently build and deploy modern applications,” it says. “Through this release, millions of Windows developers will be able to experience the benefits of containers for the first time using the languages of their choice – whether.NET, ASP.NET, and PowerShell or Python, Ruby on Rails, Java and many others.”

The news builds on a partnership with Docker Microsoft announced in October to offer container and DevOps benefits to Linux and Windows Server users. Windows Server Containers are part of the Docker open source project and can be deployed/managed using PowerShell or the Docker client.

On the Nano Server front, they’ve added a new Emergency Management Console and for software-defined networking, they’re providing a scalable network controller and a software load balancer for higher availability and performance.

More details on all of it here.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

August 19, 2015
Google Container Engine Released in Beta, Container Registry Generally Available

Google announced the beta release of Google Container Engine and the general availability of Google Container Registry.

Container Engine enables you to run Docker containers on Google Cloud Platform, powered by Kubernetes. Container Engine schedules containers based on the needs you’ve declared on a cluster of virtual machines.

“While containers make packaging apps easier, DevOps and IT administrators need better tools to unlock the promise of containerization,” says Google in a blog post. “Container Engine makes it easy for you to set up a container cluster and manage your application. Simply define your containers’ needs, such as CPU and memory requirements, and Container Engine schedules your containers into your cluster and manages them automatically. Also, because it’s built on Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration system, you can move workloads or take advantage of multiple cloud providers.”

You can create a container cluster that supports the v1 Release Candidate of Kubernetes, which was also just released. Container Engine manages the uptime of Kubernetes, and manages updates to the underlying Kubernetes system. You can choose when to accept the update, and can run a single command to have your container cluster updated to the latest version.

Those using Google Cloud VPN to connect their datacenter to Google can reserve an IP address range for their container cluster so cluster IPs can coexist with private network IPs. You can also enable Google Cloud Logging.

During the beta, there is no additional charge for Container Engine beyond the Google Cloud Platform resources you’re already using. Once it becomes generally available, there will be two pricing levels: $0.15 per hour for standard clusters and no charge for basic clusters with the ability to upgrade to standard. Google notes it may start charging for basic in the future. You can get a more detailed look at pricing here.

“Google Container Registry helps make it easy for you to store your container images in a private and encrypted registry, built on Cloud Platform,” Google says. “Pricing for storing images in Container Registry is simple: you only pay Google Cloud Storage costs. Pushing images is free, and pulling Docker images within a Google Cloud Platform region is free (Cloud Storage egress cost when outside of a region).”

In other Google Cloud Platform news, Google has added Logentries integration.

Image via YouTube

June 22, 2015