"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" - David Wheeler<p>That's what "containers" are, of course. There's so much state in OS file namespaces that running any complex program requires "installation" first. That's such a mess that virtual machines were created to allow a custom OS environment for a program. Then that turned into a mess, with, for example, a large number of canned AWS instances to choose from. So now we have another level of indirection, "containers".<p>Next I expect we'll have container logistics management startups. These will store your container in a cloud-based "warehouse", and will continuously take bids for container execution resources. Containers will be automatically moved around from Amazon to Google to Rackspace, etc. depending on who's offering the lowest bid right now.
Docker in general is just another swing of the granularity pendulum. Since the rise of distributed environments in the late 1980s, the pendulum has swung back and forth between microservices (which become a version control tangle as they move independently) and monolithic applications (which become a bloatware problem as they have whole kitchen sinks to move around). The core problem is that software is complex, and at a certain level, you can't take complexity away - just push it around here and there. A large number of small pieces, or a small number of large pieces. Which kneecap do you want shot in?<p>After a few years of trending toward monoliths via chef/puppet/ansible DevOps automation, Docker is going in a different direction, toward fragmented SOA. It'll go that way for a while until it becomes too painful, and then new tech will come to push us back to the monolithic approach, until that hurts too much...<p>The good thing is, these cycles come in response to improvements in technology and performance. Our tools get better all the time, and configuration management struggles to keep up. It's awesome! Docker will rule for a while and then be passed by in favor of something new, but it'll leave a permanent mark, just as Chef did, and Maven, and Subversion, and Ant, and Make, and CVS, and every other game-changer.
Security-wise, if I understand correctly, this is a very interesting offering.<p>1. The containers live on "your" VMs so you get the isolation of a virtual machine and do not worry about the other tenants' containers.<p>2. The VMs are part of a "private cloud", i.e., the internal network is not accessible by other tenants' VMs and containers.<p>#2 is what worried me the most in other container service offerings. It's easy to overlook protecting your internal ip when you manage VMs, it's even easier (and expected) when you deploy containers.
I'm disappointed that this requires an invite, particularly so close after Container Engine which I was able to try out immediately while still watching Cloud Platform Live the other day.<p>Is this typical for new AWS offerings?<p>It makes me wonder if it's something that truly isn't ready for prime time, but is being rushed / forced by the mounting Docker hype and GKE announcement.
Anyone have any insight about if this handles service discovery? It claims "cluster management" which usually means discovery, but there is no mention of it. Maybe Amazon is expecting you to handle that?
No mention of Elastic Load Balancing integration or even EBS integration. Thus avoiding the 2 hardest problems in container management.<p>To make this not suck you will still need a proxy layer that maps ELB listeners to your containers and if you intend to run containers with persistent storage you are going to be in for a fun ride.<p>Probably best to integrate functionality for interacting with storage systems into Docker itself, probably as a script hook interface similar to the way Xen works.
So Azure, GCE, and now EC2 all support docker natively. Sorry Canonical and LXD, but docker has basically won at this point. There simply isn't a good reason to "compete" when you can just add features to docker at this point.
Is anyone else seeing a blank confirmation page when trying to sign up? <a href="http://i.imgur.com/faztegP.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/faztegP.png</a>