
Data-focused Docker clustering – ClusterHQ - ferrantim
https://clusterhq.com/blog/data-focused-docker-clustering/
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lewq
Hey, it's Luke here. I'm one of the founders of ClusterHQ and the author of
this post. Happy to answer any questions or discuss any comments here. :)

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otterley
Some services, particularly those that have to perform complex operations
(usually SQL services), have greater resource requirements than others. So the
"homogeneous servers" requirement seems practically implausible to me, at
least from a cost-optimization standpoint.

It doesn't seem reasonable to me that we should allocate Big Hardware to, say,
an nginx HTTP proxy, just to make it possible (no matter how unlikely) to also
host a MySQL container on it at some point in the future.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

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lewq
Hey otterley, thanks for your comment!

The homogeneous server recommendation is based on experience running tens of
thousands of containers (mixed application and database containers) in
production. In that case, when you have lots more containers than you have
servers, it makes sense to allow a system which can automatically distribute
the load across those machines to do so, and getting the scheduling right for
that automatic load distribution is easier with relatively (although not
necessarily exactly) homogeneous machines.

Of course, every deployment is different, and I'm not categorically saying
"never have dedicated database hardware", just "clustering with automatic load
balancing is easier with homogeneous hardware". :)

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ademarre
Perhaps more so than database servers, homogeneity becomes impractical when
you have containers that demand access to a GPU.

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kevinastone
Your webpage doesn't render properly in Safari:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/753xgwjhvbb1ml7/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/753xgwjhvbb1ml7/Screenshot%202014-08-13%2016.02.50.png)

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ferrantim
Thanks for letting us know. We'll get that fixed.

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ademarre
Flocker, Fleet, Flynn — The Docker ecosystem is getting flippin' complicated.

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shykes
Don't forget Centurion, Helios, Atomic/Geard, Mesos/Marathon, Clocker,
Kubernetes, Consul, Deis, Shipyard, Shipper... :)

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ansible
Yikes.

Anyway, with all the interesting container and deployment technology that's
come out in the last few years, I get the feeling we're at the verge of
something wonderful.

All the system configuration and applications under version control...
Slinging around huge amounts of data using btrfs snapshots... SDN... It seems
only a matter of time before entire deployments are completely reproducible.
From top to bottom.

