We currently develop everything using Docker as the engine to encapsulate every app. This has helped us a lot in order to reduce the setup and configuration pain we as developers suffer.
There is a bunch of wiki articles on how to setup applications with Docker, head there for more explanation on that.
- Normalized environments: Eliminates differences between all of the developers machines. It also helps to minimize differences between development and productive environments, so no more "Yeah it works on your machine, but it blows up on mine/production!"
- Reduced environment setup time: The time wasted on installing specific services directly on the host is unnecessary with Docker.
- Online development servers become unnecessary: As firing a local server app instance is pretty easy with Docker - if your app is well designed - the need for paying an always-online, in the cloud app instance or servers is greatly reduced, saving costs.
Installing Docker used to be a daunting task. Not anymore. You can download it from here and start working right away.
Docker enables us to easily migrate all the application infraestructure in just a few minutes from one provider to another and test with more ease.
If you're going to run your Docker app in production, the recommended Docker-capable providers are:
While setting up a private, on-premises Docker host / cloud is not recommendable, most often than not the client will insist so much on running the app on their existing infrastructure *
That being the case, the best alternative we've evaluated is creating a Docker host cluster using Swarm to manage all the available Docker hosts:
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If the client is open to use a different linux distro, we highly recommend enabling new Docker host machines using a light linux distr, such as debian.
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If not, make sure you:
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Work side-by-side with the client's best network/sysadmin person. The client's linux distro of choice may be completely alien to you. Plus, he's better acquainted with the client's network rules and peculiarities.
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Ask this person on how to install the required version of Docker for the selected distro.
- Most of the time it is because they've invested so much money on their own infrastructure, they are not willing to use/pay another provider, even if the provider is cheaper and more reliable!