Big Data in the Cloud Management Theatre - June 19th, 14:00-14:30 Linux Containers are an exciting new technology, used in high-profile tools such as LXC and Docker. ElasticHosts IaaS offers cloud servers powered by either traditional virtualization or by containerization. This talk will introduce containers and explain their benefits over traditional virtualized servers.

1. Linux Containers:
The Future of IaaS
Richard Davies – Founder & CEO

2. There’s a buzz about Linux Containers
Recent mainline kernels (3.8+) support
containers, using namespaces and cgroups
Userspace tools for running containers,
equivalent of hypervisor tools like QEMU
Rapid, automated deployment of
applications in containers
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs

3. But what are Linux Containers?
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs

4. Virtualization vs. Containers
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs
Containers are still isolated
but share the host OS kernel
Traditional VMs each run their
own guest OS kernel

5. How do Containers beat VMs?
Automatic scaling
• No fixed size specified at boot
• Fine-grained scaling of CPU, RAM, etc as needed
Bare metal performance
• No hypervisor overhead
• Fast userspace-only boot
Efficient use of hardware ( = lower IaaS price)
• Idle containers don’t reserve hardware resources
(= don’t pay IaaS fees for idle cloud servers)
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs

6. Load varies on typical servers
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs
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Memory
Needed /
GB
- Website link
shared on Twitter
- Month-end
financial run
- Etc, etc

7. Most users don’t adjust server size
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs
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Memory
Needed /
GB
Memory
Provisioned
/ GB
Over-paying Over-paying
Slow

8. Server size adjustment is inaccurate
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs
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Memory
Needed /
GB
Memory
Provisioned
/ GB
Over-paying Over-paying
Over-
paying
Slow
Add extra
server or
expand existing
server in crude,
imprecise step
after load spike
starts
Remove extra server
or shrink existing
server in crude,
imprecise step after
load spike finishes

9. Containers auto-scale continuously
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs
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Memory
Needed /
GB
Memory
Provisioned
/ GB
Never over-paying
50% cost saving for
typical cloud server
workloads
Never slow
Continuous high
performance
since never
under-provisioned
Fully automatic scaling
No admin work or tools
required

10. Will containers crush virtualization?
Auto-Scaling Linux Containers & VMs