Will Containerization Eat Configuration Management?

Christian Kniep

Christian Kniep

Over at QNIB, Christian Kniep writes that his latest presentation examines the intersection of Docker, Containerization, and Configuration Management.

Back in the old days, I was a big fan of assembling building blocks. A bootstrapped server got a series of configuration methods thrown in his direction until he reaches the state he was expected to have. In cases in which the cat hits the fan, we would bootstrap the server and start again. In the new, shiny world of containers the server is hardly an Linux distribution but more or less a firmware to run containers on top. CoreOS, RedHat Atomic, the AMI you spin up to host Containers within EC2, all of that sort is left mostly untouched. And Docker just launched Docker Machine which aims to provide a provisioning tool. Just point in the right direction and it will jump-start a target. This means that the core competency everyone was looking for is now gone, ain’t it? Customizing services and stuff on a given docker target comes down to start the desired service images and that’s it.

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