Containerizing monolithic apps: 7 key Benefits
#5. Containers are perfect for DevOps and automation
By Khalil SARSRI
Lately, The technology of containers has been gaining momentum in the IT world. It’s considered to be one of the fastest-growing technologies in the software industry, and the numbers are in. Since it was first announced in 2013, many Tech giants have joined in like Spotify, eBay, Paypal, or Uber.
Most people agree that Microservices and containers make the perfect duo. Even though Microservices architecture doesn’t dictate the use of containers, they are still the best choice for running this kind of apps.
Moreover, Containers don’t turn applications magically into microservices. So, people are less enthusiastic about running their legacy monolithic apps on containers. Hence, decision-makers are confronted with such a conundrum: Should they containerize them anyway? Should they first rebuild or refactor them into Microservices?
The goal of this article is to provide you with insight regarding the benefits that you can still get from running monolithic apps on containers.
So, let’s deep dive !
#1. Cost-effectiveness
Using containers is showing to be incredibly cost-effective. There are many cost-saving advantages, and the list can go on for pages.
For instance, containers facilitate faster software delivery, this translates to cost-saving by enhancing the team productivity, thus minimizing the labor cost. Furthermore, containers enable more efficient use of the system resources, which means you can run more apps with fewer physical servers.
#2. Resources use
The runtime cost of Containers is known to be negligible. Instances of containerized apps use far less memory and CPU than virtual machines, they start up and stop almost immediately.
According to a study conducted by IBM, Docker is nearly identical to native performance and faster than virtual machines in every category.
As far as storage is concerned, containers can be packed far more densely on their host hardware, and Docker reports that their approach can reduce storage costs by up to 35%.
#3. Consistent and Isolated Environment
I’ve always come across situations where running an application in isolated environments is mandatory due to either legal or technical compliance issues/considerations. To that end, I think that using containers is the best option.
From a security point of view, containers ensure that applications are completely isolated, no container can look into other container processes. From a maintenance point of view, applications don’t intermix and each container gets its own set of resources which makes maintenance easier and straightforward.
Note: In order to use containers safely, you should be aware of the potential security issues. If used properly, they can provide a more secure environment than VMs or Bare Metal.
#4. Build once, run anywhere
Containers enable you to package your app and all the dependencies needed to run it. As a result, you will be able to build apps that run the same anywhere, in the private cloud, public cloud, or even a laptop.
The Docker standard way of “build once run anywhere” is made possible by using a global Docker registry. The built images reside in the registry, and you can run the container anywhere where you have access to this registry.
#5. Containers are perfect for DevOps and automation
Containers simplify Devops and create the perfect environment for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.
Container images make deployments quicker. Moreover, applications remain consistent in any environment, meaning that there will be no or little surprises in production. The icing on the cake, if there is a problem with the current iteration, rollback to the older version of the container image can be done easily done.
#6. Scalability
In contrast with virtual machines, scaling is fairly straightforward with containers. They allow your apps to scale up or down in response to fluctuating demand.
And while this would take a lot of effort in a traditional infrastructure, and involve many contributors, it can be done easily done by spinning containers up or down, without the overhead of virtual machines or the configuration headache for each one.
#7. Time to market
Faster execution and faster time-to-market are leverages that every organization looks for.
As seen before, containers drastically decrease the deployment and scaling time to seconds. Thus, enabling you to ship your software updates more quickly to your end-users, which gives you advantage over the competition.
With all that said, containerizing monolithic apps have many advantages, and is mostly a better choice than using traditional virtual machines.
To benefit from containers, it’s not mandatory to rewrite and break your apps into Microservices. Maybe this doesn’t suit your business and your solution best.
One should keep in mind that a Microservices architecture is not a one-size-fits-all approach. A monolith works better for many cases, and there is no need and emergency to follow the hype around Microservices.