[Discuss] Docker containers deployed with Tutum

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:
> If you want to launch an Amazon Cloud instance with an application + LAMP
> stack, don't try to "make things easier" by starting off with a Bitnami
> AMI.  You'll only shoot yourself in the foot, and end up starting over.
> 
> I'm against vendor lock-in...

All the cool kids are using Docker containers now. That's one way to
create some vendor independence between your application and your cloud
provider.

One easy way to do that is with Tutum[1]. It provides an easy web GUI
for provisioning and managing Docker containers.

There are two pieces to this. The first is deploying a VM image to a
cloud server. They support turn-key deployments to Microsoft Azure,
Digital Ocean, and Amazon Web Services. (We've used them with Digital
Ocean, which is the least complicated to set up and cheapest.)

The VM image is a Linux OS (Ubuntu I believe) with Docker and some Tutum
tools. This is the base node upon which your Docker containers will be
deployed. With this approach you can subdivide a VM instance and share
it among several applications. (Obviously you're limited by available
RAM and CPU.)

(They also have the option of deploying to a non-VM Linux host. In that
case you set up the host manually[2] by adding the Tutum packages to it
and granting it access.)

Then once the host is provisioned, you can then spin up containers on
it. They have a library of existing containers you can use as-is or
customize. They also provide a repository for storing your customized
containers.

Containers are more efficient than VM instances, but limited to Linux,
as they all share a common kernel. There is less overhead to containers,
and unlike a VM, a container doesn't gobble up a fixed chunk of RAM, but
instead draws from a shared pool of RAM.

1. https://www.tutum.co/

(Note that when Tutum first launched, their service included hosting.
Many articles you'll run across online will mention this. Quite some
time back the pivoted, and no concentrate only on the tool to manage the
containers. It's up to you to supply the hosting.)

2.
https://support.tutum.co/support/solutions/articles/5000513678-bring-your-own-node


> It's the antithesis of open source IMHO.

Most of this system is built on the existing Docker open source project,
and you can connect to the hosts managed by Tutum and run standard
Docker commands. They also have their own command-line tools, and they
seem to be open source as well, published here:
https://github.com/tutumcloud

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/