In this page, you’ll learn everything you need to know about the differences between Docker containers and Virtual Machines Show When it comes to cloud infrastructure, VMware has long been the go-to standard for its many advantages: its ability to run multiple OS environments that don’t affect each other, the choice of virtual machine types, and its consolidated toolkit that makes VM management easy. However, consider this: What if you had an alternative to VMware that was more lightweight, economical and more scalable? That’s exactly what Docker is – a container technology that lets users develop distributed applications. So, how are the two different? And how do they complement each other? Let’s find out. What is a Virtual Machine?The concept of a virtual machine is simple, really: it’s a virtual server that emulates a hardware server. A virtual machine relies on the system’s physical hardware to emulate the exact same environment on which you install your applications. Depending on your use case, you can use a system virtual machine (that runs an entire OS as a process, allowing you to substitute a real machine for a virtual machine), or process virtual machines that let you execute computer applications alone in the virtual environment. For more details on VMs, and for some background for evaluating Docker vs VM, see the official site: vmware › What is Docker?Docker is an open source project that offers a software development solution known as containers. To understand Docker, you need to know what containers are. According to Docker, a container is ” a lightweight, stand-alone, executable package of a piece of software that includes everything needed to run it.” And since containers are platform-independent, Docker can run across both Windows- and Linux-based platforms. In fact, Docker can also be run within a virtual machine if need be. The main purpose of Docker is that it lets you run microservice applications in a distributed architecture. Docker ArchitectureDocker’s architecture is also client-server based. However, it’s a little more complicated than a virtual machine because of the features involved. It consists of four main parts:
For more details, see the official site: Docker product discovery › Common Use CasesNow that you have an idea of what VM and Docker containers are, it’s important to understand the potential use cases for both. While they are both more or less used to develop applications, here is where the differences really start. Real-World Use Case for VMsStarling Bank is a digital-only bank that was built in just one year on VMs provided by AWS. This is possible because of the efficiency virtual machines deliver over traditional hardware servers. Importantly, it cost Starling Bank just a tenth of traditional servers. Real-World Use Case for DockerPaypal uses Docker to drive “cost efficiency and enterprise-grade security” for its infrastructure. Paypal runs VMs and containers side-by-side and says that containers reduce the number of VMs it needs to run.
Docker Containers vs. VMsAt last, we arrive at the big question: how are the two different? It all comes down to what you want to do with them. Below, we’ll mention a few advantages of Docker as opposed to a virtual machine (specifically Docker vs. VMware), and vice versa.Pricing comparison
For more details and a Docker vs VM comparison, see this page by UpGuard › Advantages of Virtual Machines
Advantages of Docker Containers
For more details, see an in-depth discussion: How containers and VM are different › The road ahead is quickly changing for VMs at least, as Docker is quickly rising in popularity among major corporations. It’s clear that speed and efficiency are the biggest needs for DevOps teams, and Docker is better at providing these over VMs. While it still hasn’t completely replaced virtual machines in production environments, Docker’s potential is being noticed. That isn’t to say that VMs will soon be gone. Rather, Docker and VMs will co-exist next to each other, giving DevOps teams more choices in how to run their cloud-native applications.
One of the frequent questions asked about Docker is how it differs from VM (virtual machine). When it comes to cloud infrastructure, the virtual machine has been the go-to standard for many of its advantages. However, what if you had an alternative to a virtual machine that was more lightweight, economical, and scalable. That’s precisely what Docker is. Docker is a container-based technology that lets you develop distributed applications. In this blog post, I will explain the differences between virtual machines and Docker containers. What is a Virtual Machine?A virtual machine is a system which acts exactly like a computer. In simple terms, it makes it possible to run what appears to be on many separate computers on hardware, that is one computer. Each virtual machine requires its underlying operating system, and then the hardware is virtualized. What is Docker?Docker is a tool that uses containers to make creation, deployment, and running of application a lot easier. It binds application and its dependencies inside a container. Learning Docker is easy! Docker vs. VMNow I’ll tell you the significant differences between docker containers and virtual machines. Well, the significant differences are their operating system support, security, portability, and performance. So let’s discuss each one of these terms one by one. Operating System SupportThe operating system support of Virtual machine and Docker container is very different. From the image above, you can see each virtual machine has its guest operating system above the host operating system, which makes virtual machines heavy. While on the other hand, Docker containers share the host operating system, and that is why they are lightweight. Sharing the host operating system between the containers make them very light and helps them to boot up in just a few seconds. Hence, the overhead to manage the container system is very low compared to that of virtual machines. The docker containers are suited for situations where you want to run multiple applications over a single operating system kernel. But if you have applications or servers that need to run on different operating system flavors, then virtual machines are required. SecurityThe virtual machine does no share operating system, and there is strong isolation in the host kernel. Hence, they are more secure as compared to Containers. A container have a lot of security risks, and vulnerabilities as the containers have shared host kernel. Also, since docker resources are shared and not namespaced, an attacker can exploit all the containers in a cluster if he/she gets access to even one container. In a virtual machine, you don’t get direct access to the resources, and hypervisor is there to restrict the usage of resources in a VM. PortabilityDocker containers are easily portable because they do not have separate operating systems. A container can be ported to a different OS, and it can start immediately. On the other hand, virtual machines have separate OS, so porting a virtual machine is difficult as compared to containers, and it also takes a lot of time to port a virtual machine because of its size. For development purposes where the applications must be developed and tested in different platforms, Docker containers are the ideal choice. PerformanceComparing Virtual machines and Docker Containers would not be fair because they both are used for different purposes. But the lightweight architecture of docker its less resource-intensive feature makes it a better choice than a virtual machine. As a result, of which containers can startup very fast compared to that of virtual machines, and the resource usage varies depending on the load or traffic in it. Unlike the case of virtual machines, there is no need to allocate resources permanently to containers. Scaling up and duplicating the containers is also an easy task compared to that of virtual machines, as there is no need to install an operating system in them. Conclusion Here is a table which concludes on a virtual machine and Docker container differences.
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