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5 Usecases of Docker That Will Blow Your Mind

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by Navishka Darshana  |   July 12th, 2022

May you have heard the most popular meme, "It works on my machine," among developers or programmers. ๐Ÿ˜‰

If this meme fact is clarified, let's think you created an application working fine on your machine(dev environment). You're happy now because your developed application works well on your device. But in production(production environment), it doesn't work correctly. ๐Ÿฅฒ

The application has to go through different environments as it moves from the developer's machine (dev environment) to the production(production environment). Each of these environments may have minor variations. It may not work correctly when you deploy your code from the dev environment to the production environment without Docker. That's when you say the developer's famous words, "It works on my machine." The main reason is that dependencies, libraries, versions, frameworks, OS-level features, etc., are available on the developer's machine but not in the production environment.

So we need a standardized way to package the application with its dependencies and deploy it in any environment. For this, we can use Docker. Docker is a tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy and run applications using containers. Docker package an application and all its dependencies in a virtual container that can run on any Linux server. Docker helps developers pack their software more painless than ever to "build once and run anywhere." So It is essential to dockerize your application, and it will often create a lot of benefits for your application. We have identified the following primary use cases in Docker.

๐Ÿ† 1 - Simplified VM Configuration

The primary use case Docker advocates is simplifying configuration. One significant advantage of VMs is running any platform with its config on top of your infrastructure. The Docker is similar to a virtual machine but more lightweight than a virtual machine. Docker also affords this similar functionality even without the overhead of a virtual machine. It lets you put your environment and configuration into code and install it. The same Docker configuration can be used in a variety of settings.

In addition, it helps to run our applications multiple PaaS(platform as a service)/SaaS(software as a service) even without extra tweaks. Amazon, Google, and every IaaS/PaaS provider support Docker now.

๐Ÿ† 2 - App Isolation

Docker is basically a container-based virtualization platform, unlike hypervisor on virtualization. So Docker offers the ability to package and run your application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. Docker allows you to run multiple isolated and secure containers simultaneously on a given host. If there is a problem with one container, it is limited to that container. It does not affect the other containers on the given host. So That means Docker naturally gives your application a higher level of security.

๐Ÿ† 3 - Code Pipeline Management

The code has to go through different environments as it moves from the developer's machine to the production. Each of these environments may have minor variations. It may not work correctly when you deploy your code from the dev environment to the production environment without Docker. That's when you say the developer's famous words, "It works on my machine." The main reason is that dependencies, libraries, versions, frameworks, etc., are available on the developer's machine but not in the production environment.

Docker provides a consistent environment for the application from dev to production, easing the code development and deployment pipeline. The immutable nature of Docker images and the ease with which they can be spun up help you achieve zero change in application runtime environments across dev to production.

๐Ÿ† 4 - Multi-tenancy

Another compelling use case of Docker is to use it in multi-rental applications, thus avoiding rewriting significant applications. For example, is developing a quick and easy multi-tenant for an IoT application. Code bases for multi-tenant applications are more complicated, rigid, and difficult to handle. Redesigning an application is not only a waste of time; it also costs a lot of money.

Using Docker, it was easy and inexpensive to create an isolated environment for each tenant to run multiple instances of applications. This was possible because of the speed of spin-up of Docker environments and its easy-to-use API, which we can use to spin containers programmatically.

๐Ÿ† 5 - Server Consolidation

Just like using VMs to integrate multiple applications, Docker's application isolation capabilities allow various servers to be integrated to save costs. Even without the memory footprint of different operating systems, Docker provides a much denser server integration than you can get with VMs. Newer breeds of highly customizable PaaS, such as Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and App Engine, now use this powerful feature in your containers with Docker.

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