One of my readers wanted to know more about containers and wondered how ipSpace.net materials could help him. Here’s a short step-by-step guide:

I published this blog post to help ipSpace.net subscribers navigate through Docker- and containers-related material. You might want to skip it if you’re not one of them.

From quick service deployment perspective, are containers any different from spinning up virtual machines?

I covered the fundamental (technology) differences between containers and virtual machines in Server- and OS Virtualization section of Data Center for Networking Engineers webinar.

If you want a glimpse of how things work: Matt Oswalt illustrated how easy it is to start a container or build an application stack with Docker Swarm and Docker Compose in his Introduction to Docker webinar.

Also, Matthias Luft did a great job introducing Docker and DevOps concepts in Docker Security and Devops and Security in Enterprise Environments webinars.

Are there similar features in existence for containers such as vMotion, SRM etc

The technology introduction in Server- and OS Virtualization section of Data Center for Networking Engineers webinar will tell you why you cannot do vMotion (or at least why it would be exceedingly hard to do).

You can get SRM-like behavior with Docker Swarm and Docker Compose. Matt explained some those concepts in Introduction to Docker webinar, and I did a few demos in the Docker and Containers workshop.

What are key considerations from Dev Ops perspective to choose between different Container Orchestration Platforms

Mathias covered that in a bit of detail, but not too much. He claims most his customers use Swarm, obviously you get a totally different message from Google or people partnering with them ;)

And of course what are you recommendations for Network Engineers around stuff they should absolutely know about Containers and material they should go through.

Apart from mastering the fundamentals (see above), you MUST watch the Docker Networking webinar by Dinesh Dutt, and we plan to do a webinar on Kubernetes in second half of 2018.