Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

In the simplest of terms, container orchestration is the automated process of deploying, managing, scaling and networking containers. Containers are lightweight, portable self contained units that include an application or the processes needed to run applications. Docker is a great example of a project that helps to containerize or package applications, and was a large reason why containers gained such popularity around 2013. Before Docker there were Linux Containers (LXC).

Trends in tech come and go, but certain underlying primitives stick around forever. In software, two such primitives are virtual machines and containers. Virtualization paved the way for the cloud to become massive. Data centers would likely never have been commercially viable without it. While still relatively new, containerization has already made a serious mark on the software engineering world.

Infrastructure management isn't about taking sides. Too often, teams get pulled into “X is better than Y” debates that miss the bigger picture: your compute stack should serve your needs, not industry hype. A common decision point in the past has been the choice between bare metal or cloud hyperscalar virtualization. Nowadays, the answer isn't 1 or 0.

Observability and monitoring are the cornerstone of resilient, high-performing applications. Nearly every IT or software engineering leader we come into contact with emphasizes the importance of the ability to understand and diagnose what is going on with their applications at all times. Having clear and concise visibility into your applications is no longer optional.