5 Reasons to Love Azure Containers
The world of computing moves so quickly these days that you need to be able to run your important applications, resources, and programs anywhere – and fast. You can’t spend days setting up and testing environments, different operating systems, and varying dependencies. And it’s even more complicated today since your infrastructure possibilities can range from hosting everything on your own servers at your own site to hosting everything on someone else’s servers across different cloud providers and everything in between. As a result, keeping a stable environment that can be replicated quickly is trickier than ever. Fortunately, containers on Azure offer an excellent solution to this dilemma.
In this article, we will explore 5 reasons why you will love Azure Containers and the immediate business benefits you can experience with them.
Reason #1: Containers are Easier
For those unfamiliar with containers, a container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another1. With containers, there is no need to setup a virtual machine for each application. Multiple containers can run on a single virtual machine, with each container completely separated from the others.
Likewise, containers simplify the process of provisioning and assigning resources. And when you are ready, Web App for Containers can pull container images and deploy the containerized apps across your selected infrastructure.
Reason #2: Azure Containers are Cheaper
As mentioned earlier, a container keeps each application separate without requiring a completely separate environment. This means there is no need to license – and pay for – an operating system for every individual container. Likewise, there is no need for a costly hypervisor to manage all of those virtual machine instances. Whether it is a bare metal installation or completely virtual, numerous containers can run on a single operating system instance, saving you significant money.
Reason #3: Azure Containers Support Standard Interfaces
Whether it’s Kubernetes, the standard Docker command line, or any of the other supported Azure container offerings, Azure exposes the standard command line tools and APIs that many developers are already accustom to using. Therefore, if you are already familiar with the existing command-line functionality and don’t want to learn a new interface in Azure, no problem. While the built-in Azure tools may be easier to learn and quicker to access, the standard command line tools and APIs remain fully accessible.
Reason #4: Azure Containers Are Predictable
One of the complications of both development and deployment is ensuring that an application or instance runs correctly everywhere it is installed. Containers give you the ability to include application dependencies with the application itself. If the container had everything it needed to run last time, then the container will have everything it needs to run next time as well. These features help avoid seemingly minor, unintentional deviations in an environment that can cause large, often hard-to-find, problems with deployment.
Reason #5: Azure Containers Can Be Replicated
Need a new testing environment? Why not make it exactly the same as the production environment by creating another installation of the same container? Need another instance for load-balancing, internal use only, or to cut down on bandwidth usage? How about a containerized app that runs on every local network, no matter how many offices you have? With containers, it is easy to replicate the same application environment to a new infrastructure, no matter how different that infrastructure is.
Get Started with Azure Containers Today
Without a doubt, containers are revolutionizing application development in today’s world. In this article, we have explored 5 key benefits of leveraging Azure Containers, including simplicity, lower costs, support for standard interfaces, predictability, and reliability. But that’s not all. Next week, in Part 2, we will grow this list even further with 4 MORE reasons to love Azure Containers. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in finding out more about container development or have further questions about how Azure Containers can benefit you, Imaginet is here to help. As a leading provider of application development services for over 20 years, Imaginet can help you and your software team gain unprecedented efficiencies by adopting container development and leveraging the power of Azure Containers.
Thank you for reading this post! If you enjoyed it, I encourage you to check out some of our other content on this blog. We have a range of articles on various topics that I think you’ll find interesting. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated with all of the latest information on Imaginet’s recent successful projects
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