
Containers and Distributed Systems: Where They Came from and Where They’re Going - florianleibert
https://mesosphere.com/blog/containers-distributed-systems/
======
ChuckMcM
This was a lot of fun, one of the things that doesn't get much air time is
that back in the early 2000's when "clusters" and "NUMA SMP machines" were
competing with each other the big argument for large SMP iron was ACID
compliant SQL databases like Oracle. Now that Google has implemented an ACID
compliant SQL database across clusters it puts the final nail in the argument
(for me at least) that "Some things only work on SMP machines"

~~~
kuschku
Indeed, the trend is clear, but for now, nothing has changed.

Google's implementation is not very helpful to all those companies,
individuals, NGOs, and governments that have to follow privacy laws, HIPAA,
etc though, because Google's implementation isn't open source, and these
entities can't use Google Cloud. Or don't want to.

Until we get an open source solution for this, SMP machines will be useful.

And even then, you save money by having less and larger machines in your
cluster than just having tiny ones. Larger machines means your overhead is
reduced.

~~~
numbsafari
Uhhhh... most orgs that run HIPAA workloads do so slavishly on Windows and
EPIC, neither of which are famously what most would consider open source.

~~~
kuschku
You’re right, the real distinction is on-premises vs off-premises, I should
have made that more clear (although free software implies on-premises being
possible)

~~~
numbsafari
I’m still confused... most orgs running HIPAA workloads are still doing so on
prem, AND using very much non-free software.

Google, and Amazon, and MS, undergo extensive third-party audits and people
can, and do, run HIPAA workloads there.

I’m not sure what distinction you are trying to draw.

~~~
kuschku
The distinction is that companies that require HIPAA workloads aren’t going to
upload their entire dataset into Google Cloud Spanner, which is not available
as on-prem version, and which isn’t HIPAA certified.

So either we need an on-prem version of Cloud Spanner, Cloud Spanner needs to
be HIPAA certified, certified to match German privacy laws, etc, or Cloud
Spanner can’t serve these situations.

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chubot
_Just to double-click on container technology, why do you think it took so
long for this technology that was built into Solaris to become mainstream with
Docker?_

I think VMWare deserves a mention here? And the terms OS Virtualization vs
Hardware virtualization do as well (Ctrl-F doesn't find them.)

For awhile hardware virtualization (VMWare) was more prevalent, but it's more
complex and has more overhead than OS virtualization (containers). That is how
people solved the problem of having powerful machines and small workloads (or
workloads with a lot of variance).

Although historically it might have been that hardware virtualization actually
came first, in IBM mainframes. In the Unix world I guess OS virtualization
came first.

~~~
kakwa_
I think docker succeeded not because it was a better container or
virtualization solution, or because it was lighter than VMs. Jails or Solaris
zones have existed for years or decades, and on Linux, we had openvz and
vserver long before Docker. And I'm not even mentioning plain old chroot (with
indeed some security issues).

I didn't follow the latest development, but for a while, Docker was not even
that great in term of robustness and stability. I never was a big fan of the
userland proxy for example. And from what I've read, upgrading from one docker
version to another could be quite painful (disclaimer: I toyed with docker a
little, I haven't used it in production yet).

IMHO, Docker succeeded because it brought a complete ecosystem around
containers:

* Ways to generate the container image through Dockerfile

* Ways to compose an image on top of another (itself on top of another, etc...)

* Ways to share and distribute these images with Docker Registry

------
cat199
"You basically came up with Docker before Docker was around, or at least with
things like Solaris zones and C groups."

Except jails already existed on FreeBSD, and CP/CMS on mainfraimes in the 70s
existed long before this...

~~~
bpicolo
Docker won the UX game, which mattered the most here. :)

~~~
havetocharge
It only mattered the most because it was thought of last. If it was UX that
increased impact by improving access, then it indeed mattered a great deal.

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naasking
Containerization long predates Solaris, even on commodity hardware. Capability
operating systems dating back to the 60s and 70s support even more extreme
isolation by default.

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swizydo
yea indeed

