UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 5th Edition

25	Containers

Few technologies have generated as much excitement and hype in recent years as the humble container, whose explosion in popularity coincided with the release of the open source Docker project in 2013. Containers are of particular interest to system administrators because they standardize software packaging, an ambition that has long been tantalizingly out of reach.

To illustrate the utility of containers, consider a typical web application developed in any modern language or framework. At a minimum, the following ingredients are needed to install and run the app:

• The code for the application and its correct configuration ...