Hitler Uses Docker, Annotated

If you haven’t seen it, this is a very accurate and smart Downfall satire on Docker’s ecosystem, technology, and culture. It’s so good that I thought it would be instructive to annotate it so that the state of the art and some technical details of Docker could be better explained. Tweet me @ianmiell if you … Read more

Linux Scales

Scales? The idea behind this tool is to reinforce Linux command-line knowledge through repeated and guided practice in a safe (Docker) environment. Video Here’s a video of it in action: It uses an automation tool called ShutIt to manage inputs and outputs in a neat programmable way. Code Source is here. Requests? I welcome suggestions for other … Read more

Convert Any Server to a Docker Container (Updated)

How and Why? Let’s say you have a server that has been lovingly hand-crafted that you want to containerize. Figuring out exactly what software is required on there and what config files need adjustment would be quite a task, but fortunately blueprint exists as a solution to that. What I’ve done here is automate that … Read more

CI as Code Part III: Dynamic Jenkins-Swarm Example

Introduction This article continues on from the previous two posts outlining a method of provisioning Jenkins instances on demand programatically using docker-compose. In this post we take this one step further by demonstrating how a Docker container can dynamically add itself as a client to the Jenkins server. Overview This updated diagram shows the architecture at … Read more

Docker 1.10 Highlights – Updated

Docker 1.10 This video demonstrates some of the highlights of the latest Docker version: User namespacing setup and demo In-memory filesystem creation In-flight resource constraining of a CPU-intensive container Internal-facing Docker network provisioning Seccomp profile enforcement (updated!) In-memory filesystems seem particularly apposite for ephemeral and I/O-intensive containers. The user namespacing feature is neat, but be aware … Read more

CI as Code Part I: Stateless Jenkins Deployments Using Docker

Currently co-authoring a book on Docker: Get 39% off with the code 39miell2 I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been uncomfortable with Jenkins’ apparent statefulness. You set up your Jenkins server, configure it exactly as you want it, then DON’T TOUCH IT. For an industry apparently obsessed with ‘infrastructure/environments/whatever as code’ this is … Read more

Docker Ecosystem Rosetta Stones

Navigating the Docker ecosystem can be confusing at the best of times. I’ve been involved in numerous conversations where people have confused Indexes, Registries, Commits, diffs, pushes, Pods, Containers, Images… the list goes on. I’ve put together these references to try and help with these confusions. Please get in touch if anything seems amiss, or … Read more