Docker: Up & Running

Chapter 12. Conclusion

We’ve had a pretty good tour through what Docker is and isn’t, and how it can benefit you and your organization. We also mapped some of the common pitfalls. We have tried to impart to you many of the small pieces of wisdom that we picked up from running Docker in production. Our personal experience has shown that the promise of Docker is realistically achievable, and we’ve seen significant benefits in our organization as a result. Like other powerful technologies, Docker is not without its downsides, but the net result has been a big positive for us, our teams, and our organization. If you implement the Docker workflow and integrate it into the processes you already have in your organization, there is every reason to believe that you can benefit from it as well. So let’s quickly review the problems that Docker is designed to help you solve and some of the power it brings to the table.

The Challenges

In traditional deployment workflows, there are all manner of required steps that significantly contribute to the overall pain felt by teams. Every step you add to the deployment process for an application increases the overall risk inherent in shipping it to production. Docker combines a workflow with a simple tool set that is targeted squarely at addressing these concerns. Along the way, it aims your development process toward some industry best practices, and its opinionated approach leads to better communication and more robustly crafted applications. Some ...