Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference

09 – 12 December 2019 / Las Vegas

Container Technology

Dennis Smith

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So why do we call it “Containers”

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Key Issues

1 What are containers, why are they so popular?

What deployment and operational challenges do

2 containers present?

3 What are the top container use cases and solutions?

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Key Issues

1 What are containers and why are they so popular?

What deployment and operational challenges do

2 containers present?

3 What are the top container use cases and solutions?

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So What Are Containers ?
Platform Application development

Development workflow CI/CD

Orchestration Security availability

Scheduling Availability

Container engine Container format compatibility

Operating system OS support

Virtual infrastructure I&O efficiency

Physical infrastructure Location (on- and/or off-premises)

CI/CD: Continuous integration/Continuous deployment

Development I&O DevOps
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Strategic Planning Assumption
By 2022, over 90% of Global 5000 organizations will have critical production
application container deployments, up from less than 30% today.

Why it will happen: Why it won’t happen:

• Enterprises realize the need to take • Application architectural changes,
advantage of the agility and speed that needed to fully utilize container
container technology can enable technology, are too tough for many
• Associated container tooling gets • Tooling does not evolve
better • Other technology supplants containers
• Managed services is plentiful and (e.g., serverless)
helps many enterprises without
expertise

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Survey Question: How Do You Describe Your
Organization’s Container Activity
1. No plans or activity
2. Plans but no activity
3. Just getting started (i.e., testing, POC, piloting, etc.)
4. Deployed a few containerized applications into production
5. Deployed a significant number of containerized applications into
production
6. Far along, containerized most of our targeted application

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Key Issues

1 What are containers and why are they so popular?

What deployment and operational challenges do

2 containers present?

3 What are the top container use cases and solutions?

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Containers

Deployment
Benefits
Challenges

Orchestration, Scheduling and

Networking and Load Balancing
Cluster Management

Stateful Application Support

Security
API, CLI, GUI
Logging & Monitoring

Autoscaling and/or Availability Cost Ecosystem Partnerships

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1. Orchestration, Scheduling and
Cluster Management
Ensures that the application can run on the underlying
infrastructure and meet the needed service levels

How many
Which approach clusters and how How will I handle
should I deploy large will the multiple tenants
clusters be

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2. API, Command Line Interface and GUI

The door into the environment for both

development and operations personnel

Is it intuitive Is the functionality

Does it provide me
enough for the the same across
the granularity
personas I need each mode
needed
to support of access

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3. Autoscaling and/or Availability

The ability to be agile and scale at the behest of the

orchestrator/scheduler. Also ensure availability.

How tethered is
How difficult
Which method the function to
is it to deploy
will I use the underlying
and maintain
infrastructure

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4. Networking and Load Balancing

The ability to address the unique networking

requirements that containers present

Will I use Will I partner How might a

an overlay or with my existing Service Mesh fit
underlay approach network vendor(s) within the picture

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5. Stateful Application Support

The ability to handle stateful applications as more critical

applications are containerized

Can/should I
What is the How do I
leverage one of
underlying implement
existing storage
technology data protection
vendors

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6. Logging and Monitoring

Monitoring and logging to handle the high volume

and dynamic nature that containers present

Do I select an
What is the Can I use my on-premises
anticipated volume existing vendor solution or a
SaaS offering

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7. Security

Addresses the unique challenges

presented by containers challenges

How do I apply
How do I perform
How will I handle scanning with
environmental
my registries automated
hygiene
remediation

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8. Ecosystem Partnerships

The dynamics of the vendor environment

Am I viewing my
What are the major Which are my vendor selections
relevant open chosen vendor as tactical which
source projects aligned with might change
over time

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9. Cost

Costing for the offering or service

What components
(beyond the core Is it priced per Have I factored in
infrastructure am core or application other components
I charged for)

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Key Issues

1 What are containers and why are they so popular?

What deployment and operational challenges do

2 containers present?

3 What are the top container use cases and solutions?

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The Container Use Case Spectrum

Lift-and-Shift Refactor Build New

Monolithic Applications Legacy Applications Distributed Applications

• Gaining agility from • Breaking up a monolithic • Building new cloud-native

packaging and portability application into a
service-oriented architecture
• Modernizing the application
delivery pipeline • Building new containerized
distributed applications
applications at large scale
• Stateful, but highly
dynamic microservices

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Reference Architecture

Management UI APP
Life Cycle
Policy and Governance

Management API CRD

Monitoring
Service
Security

Mesh
Orchestration Service Discovery Service
and Scheduling and Registration Ingress Catalog
Routing Registry

Container Runtime CRI CNI CSI

Infrastructure Integration and Management

CRI: Container Runtime Interface

Virtual or Physical Infrastructure CNI: Container Network Interface
Compute Network Storage CSI: Container Storage Interface

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Container Options
On-Premises IaaS-Hosted Hosted/Managed Cloud Serverless
Container Container Services Container Container
Orchestration Orchestration Service Instances

Self-Managed Application Application Application Application Application

Service Service Service Service Service
Provider-Managed
Data Plane Data Plane Data Plane
Data Plane Data Plane (Cloud or (Cloud) (Cloud)
On-Premises)

Control Plane Control Plane Control Plane Control Plane Control Plane

Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster

Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure

Container Management Software Public Cloud Container Services

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Container Management Software
Vendors Sampling
Vendor Offering(s)
Docker Docker Enterprise

HashiCorp HashiCorp Nomad

D2iQ DC/OS, Konvoy

VMware-Pivotal Pivotal Cloud Foundry (includes Pivotal

Application Service [PAS] and Container Service
[PKS])
Rancher Labs Rancher

IBM-Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform;

OKD 3.10
VMware VMware PKS
Public Cloud Container Service Vendors Sampling
Vendor Offering(s)
Alibaba Group Alibaba Cloud Container Service, Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes,
Alibaba Cloud Elastic Container Instance (ECI), Alibaba Container Registry

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS),
Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS Fargate

Google Google Kubernetes Engine, Google Container Registry

IBM IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service (IKS),

IBM Cloud Container Registry

Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure App Service, Azure Container Instances
(ACI), Azure Container Registry

Oracle Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud
Infrastructure Registry

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What Does the Future Hold?

• Growing enterprise adoption

• Continual vendor dynamics
• Navigating the question: Abstracting complexity versus Inhibiting Innovation
• ISV adoption
• Container marketplace
• Overlap with other technologies (e.g., serverless)
• Security improvements
• Edge use cases
• Growing deployment of stateful and data management workloads.
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Action Plan for I&O Leaders

When You Return to the Office:

• Determine your organization’s container plans by reaching out to architects
and application developers.
Next 90 Days:
• Commence an understanding of the technology by reaching out to your strategic
vendors to discuss their container strategies.
• Identify your needs by defining the baseline requirements for security controls,
monitoring, logging, data persistence, networking and life cycle management
of containers.
Next 12 Months:
• View all deployments as tactical by developing a flexible architecture not based on
vendor proprietary offerings.
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 gtnr.it/reinventIandO

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Recommended Gartner Research

 Top Emerging Trends in Cloud-Native Infrastructure

Arun Chandrasekaran and Wataru Katsurashima (G00385619)
 Best Practices for Running Containers and Kubernetes in
Production
Arun Chandrasekaran (G00385131)
 How I&O Can Properly Deliver Kubernetes Support
Dennis Smith (G00383260)

For information, please contact your Gartner representative.

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