As part of our ongoing series of web seminars, CEO Jeffery Payne and Principal Consultant Rich Mills held a discussion about containers and the various ways you can leverage them to improve your software development, test, and deployment process.
During the conversation, they two discussed how modern organizations use containers in the development lifecycle, how containers support a ‘shift left’ philosophy for software testing and application security, and how containers can be used to continuously deliver applications from development through testing to production. Additionally, the two took questions from the audience about how containers interact with data, using different data sources by environment in testing, and where to get started with containers.
Check out some of the highlights below, or view the presentation and slide deck here.
…so I will say for anybody who hasn’t started using containers or doing stuff with containers, using them first is a great way to get kind of introduced to what it means to run Docker containers. And the best way that I can think of to do that is to use Docker containers, or containerization in general, in your DevOps build chain.
For example, let’s say you’re running a Jenkins server. In the classic world your development engineering teams will be running this Jenkins build server. It’s got a master that dictates things and then it’s got a bunch of agents that do work and those typically are a bunch of the ends. Well by going to something like Docker, suddenly now you’re able to just bundle these tools together…
…It also makes it much easier to scale. If I start building more and more services, more and more applications, I can scale these things out very easily using Docker…
…this actually encourages behaviors that let me build in and bundle my functional execution tests along with my source code, so that as I’m delivering updates to my source code, I deliver updates to my tests, as well. They kind of travel along together through your delivery pipeline. Anytime I fire up a container, I fire up the test right next to it, and I can execute it…
…There’s definitely a learning curve associated with learning how to manage Docker and configure Docker containers. The easiest way to do that is for your developers, or maybe your DevOps tooling team, whoever manages your build servers to use prepackaged containers everywhere…to learn how to use the build tools associated with making containers first before using containers. That really allows you to kind of dip your toe in the water slowly without over committing to it…
Explore our DevOps services and how we can help your organization get started with containers
Everything You Need to Know About Containers But Were Afraid to Ask
RICH MILLS
Richard Mills has more than 25 years of experience in software engineering with a concentration on pragmatic software process and tools. A Coveros team member since 2010, Rich has a specific focus in Agile development methods and is passionate about DevOps, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Delivery. As the Solution Architect for DevOps at Coveros, Rich is dedicated to helping customers build software better, faster, and more securely by coaching and mentoring in Agile development methodologies, automating software delivery (builds, tests, and deployments) and integrating strong security measures into development practices. He has spent his career working in the areas of static and dynamic software analysis tools, configuration management, and automated software delivery. He is an alumnus of Bucknell University where he earned a BSEG in Computer Engineering.
JEFFERY PAYNE
Jeffery Payne is CEO and founder of Coveros, Inc., a company that helps organizations accelerate the delivery of secure, reliable software using agile methods. Prior to Coveros, he was co-founder of application security company Cigital, where he was CEO for 16 years. Jeffery is a recognized software expert and popular keynote speaker at both business and technology conferences on a variety of software quality, security, DevOps, and agile topics. He has testified in front of Congress on issues such as digital rights management, software quality, and software research. Jeffery is also the technical editor of AgileConnection (www.agileconnection.com).
