Advantages and disadvantages of Docker

 

Docker is fast

 

When I was a kid, and until I started using Docker containers in my late twenties, virtualization was synonymous with lethargy. Running something inside a virtual environment meant waiting for a virtual machine to boot up, then waiting even longer to start whichever particular application I needed to run. Even emulating DOS applications in DOSBox took a while.

 

With Docker, all of that waiting is a distant memory. By cutting out the need to boot up a full virtual machine, Docker lets me start apps in a virtual, software-defined environment much more quickly.

 

 

Docker storage is still hard

Better storage options for Docker containers are on the horizon. But the fact remains that today, there is no really seamless way to connect containers to storage. Docker Data Volumes require a lot of provisioning on the host and manual configuration. They solve the storage dilemma, but not in a really user-friendly or efficient way.

 

I have yet to try out most of the third-party storage solutions for Docker containers. I’m hoping they’ll smooth things over. But what I’d really like to see is a way to do storage with Docker itself that “just works.”

 

Docker has poor monitoring

 

Basically, the only type of monitoring solution that Docker offers is the stats command. That works fine if you need very basic information about your containers. But for more advanced monitoring, you’re out of luck.

 

There are third-party tools that offer more monitoring, such as CAdvisor. Here again, though, I wish Docker itself provided more robust monitoring. I’m not looking for a full-fledged data analytics platform, but at least a way to gather more data about containers in real-time, which I could then feed to data analytics.

Docker storage is still hard

Docker has poor monitoring

Docker is platform-dependent