Re:Docker interactive tutorial
by cheeseprocedure on Friday August 16, 2013 @09:12PM
(#6227787)
These tools let you focus on the bigger picture instead of the nitty-gritty.
Docker and Vagrant are convenient for building (and distributing) consistent environments on top of (potentially wildly) different software or hardware platforms. Docker has a ton of other tricks up its sleeve (one example is "layers:" http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/terms/layer/).
Chef/Puppet/Salt/et al. are configuration management tools which enable programmatic definition of infrastructure. The key point is: you define how the system should look, not the specific steps on how to get there. Abstraction layers (management of files/users/packages/services/etc.) provided by the CM tool shield you from a nightmare of permutations, corner cases, and platform-specific options; it'll just enforce a given configuration regardless of local changes.
Having a central source of truth for systems configuration is a gamechanger in itself; your configuration directives or applications can query (or update) your configuration management database, which enables some very cool automation with very little effort. Then there's the community: for any given stack, there's probably a well-documented, well-tested Chef cookbook or Puppet manifest to build it, instantly plugging you into a rich experience base.
Yes, one could script all of this from scratch, but I'm not sure why one would.
Docker and Vagrant are convenient for building (and distributing) consistent environments on top of (potentially wildly) different software or hardware platforms. Docker has a ton of other tricks up its sleeve (one example is "layers:" http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/terms/layer/).
Chef/Puppet/Salt/et al. are configuration management tools which enable programmatic definition of infrastructure. The key point is: you define how the system should look, not the specific steps on how to get there. Abstraction layers (management of files/users/packages/services/etc.) provided by the CM tool shield you from a nightmare of permutations, corner cases, and platform-specific options; it'll just enforce a given configuration regardless of local changes.
Having a central source of truth for systems configuration is a gamechanger in itself; your configuration directives or applications can query (or update) your configuration management database, which enables some very cool automation with very little effort. Then there's the community: for any given stack, there's probably a well-documented, well-tested Chef cookbook or Puppet manifest to build it, instantly plugging you into a rich experience base.
Yes, one could script all of this from scratch, but I'm not sure why one would.