Docker: Love It Or Leave It? 6 Things To Consider

Developers simply love Docker. If you're an enterprise IT leader, you've heard about Docker. Your developers have not only heard about it, but have tried it, talked about it with their social networks and bemoaned the fact that they're not already using it at work.

As most enterprise leaders know, getting code to production is a complex and time-consuming chore. Developers can spend days waiting for a system engineer to prepare the infrastructure and configure the right packages. Meanwhile, the code was tested on a system that had yet another version.

With Docker, all of the packages and dependencies are included in the Docker container that the developer prepares. They can push code with zero manual hardware configurations or package updates. Essentially, Docker is a developer's dream -- as long as they're working on a platform supported by Docker.

System engineers don't always love Docker. There's significant debate among cloud system engineers about whether or not Docker is even necessary. Some argue that configuration management tools like Puppet and Chef -- which install packages on the fly as a cloud instance is spun up, rather than having those packages baked into a Docker image -- are easier to manage, version and make universal changes to. Puppet fits more easily into a traditional development methodology and has proven secure in enterprise environments, whereas Docker presents challenges with enterprise security. 

Do you and your enterprise love Docker? Check out the following considerations and decide for yourself.