Docker Extensions For Smart Developers!

The world of software development is changing faster than ever. The need for faster release cycle times has led to a proliferation of virtualization technologies. Virtual machines (VMs) have been around for many years, but containers have recently overshadowed them. The reason is that VMs are slower and not as lightweight as containers. With the popularity of microservices, containers have emerged as an excellent alternative to virtual machines for developing, testing and deploying applications in a lightweight environment.

There comes Docker, an open-source technology that uses Linux containers to virtualize apps and other software processes so they can run independently and more securely in another container as if they were separate computer programs on the same device.

Docker packages software applications in virtual containers so they can be shipped, deployed, and run quickly and efficiently. These containers are like virtual lockers for your application. They package your application and its dependencies so that it can be shipped and run anywhere transparently. That means you can have the same user experience from your development, testing, staging, or production systems.

Docker Extensions

Docker announced?Docker extensions at DockerCon 2022. The idea of Docker extensions is to help developers expand their capabilities by using third-party tools, just like plugins. You can enable the extensions available from the extensions tab on the Docker desktop with a single click. The extensions improve developer productivity and smoothen the workflows. Developers can use their favourite tools from a centralized place, i.e. Docker desktop.

Before exploring the various interesting extensions, go to your Docker desktop and enable extensions from the preferences.

I have listed my 9 favourite Docker extensions every developer must try.

1. Drone CI: Drone CI Docker extension?lets you do continuous integration from your laptops.

2. Disk Usage: Disk Usage?is a Docker extension by Docker. Inc that will help developers understand their disk usage.

3. vcluster: vclusters?is one such tool with which you can create virtual clusters on top of any Kubernetes cluster.?

4. Microcks: Microcks?is an Open source platform to mock and test APIs and microservices. You can deploy mocks and experiment with your rest APIs locally.

5. OpenShift: With the introduction of the OpenShift Docker extension, you can easily deploy local containers onto remote OpenShift environments or Kubernetes clusters with a single click.?

6. Portainer: Portainer is a famous container management platform that makes it easy for developers to start managing their containers.?

7. Snyk: With Snyk Docker extension, you can easily tackle critical vulnerabilities in the Docker images.

8. JFrog Xray Scan: JFrog Xray Scan helps you scan your images for vulnerabilities. This extension will list all the possible vulnerabilities associated with your Docker images.?

9. okteto: okteto is a fantastic tool that makes your developers happy and more productive by offering them pre-configured environments, so they can start developing instead of wasting time manually setting up environments.?

Read my complete article on dev community

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Life Before Kubernetes

It all started with big monolithic applications, which involved the complexities of managing and delivering software. It used to take months for developers to push their changes to production. There used to be severe downtimes, and businesses used to incur losses due to insufficient uptimes. It was a headache for organizations to make sure their services handled ongoing changes smoothly without affecting any services. That is when microservices came along as a boon, where a humongous monolithic application breaks down as several services, and each service is handled by a group of developers.?

Each microservice behaves as an individual service without affecting the other service. This helped developers as well as organizations to deploy software in chunks with increased frequency. During this time, Docker was introduced to deploy these microservices with the containerization concept.?

Figure below shows a simple representation of microservices architecture with various microservices involved in an e-commerce website:?

Docker completely revolutionized software packaging and delivery with containers, helping organizations to deliver software with speed. While containerization made a big move, there was a need for an orchestrator to manage these containers, and that is how Kubernetes was born.?

Consider a scenario where a start-up is making use of Docker containers. As the startup grows, the number of applications also increases and, similarly, so do the containers. It is easy to manage these containers when their number is lesser, but as the number starts to grow, it becomes difficult and you need an orchestrator to manage these containers. This is exactly where Kubernetes shines and helps you manage the containers with its unique features of scalability, security, self-healing, high availability, and much more.?

Life After Kubernetes

Google introduced Kubernetes in mid-2014, and later Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, and Docker joined the community. Kubernetes made every developer's and SRE’s life easier by helping them coordinate well and manage the workloads efficiently. When used efficiently, Kubernetes:?

• Removes downtimes
• Helps in application scalability according to the traffic pattern
• Helps in securing the application and the Secrets by incorporating security policies
• Allows running a plethora of applications in production
• Allows applications to roll back if something goes wrong
• Increases developer productivity by automating the tasks associated with containers.

With Kubernetes, you can deploy new projects more quickly. A reusable pipeline and new loads as code modules can now be distributed across a variety of projects. It can be difficult for development teams to keep tabs and monitor infrastructure operations if they are not automated. Unexpected traffic spikes or power outages, for example, might occur. When the application goes down, it is not a good sign for the organization. With Kubernetes, you can automate scaling and update patches to address such issues.?

Read my full article on DZone.

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BTW, What Is a Feature Flag?

A feature flag is a simple mechanism that enables you to launch new features to a subset of users while keeping them hidden from everyone else. For example, when your app is live on the app store, you can use a feature flag to control which of your new features are visible to users. This allows you to roll out the new feature to only a selected percentage of your customers.

When your new feature is behind a feature flag, it is not visible to users. You simply have to flip the switch to make the new feature visible. This might sound like a small thing, but it can have a huge impact on your product’s success.

You can use feature flags to control how much risk your business is taking at any given time. You can also use feature flags to gauge the success of your new features and get some initial responses on how users react to the latest software features and releases.

When Should You Use a Feature Flag?

Feature flags are best used on new features that you want to test in a more controlled way. They allow developers to release new features without affecting the existing code. This is done by having two versions of the same code: one with the new feature and one without it. When the developer wants to release a new feature, they simply flip a switch and enable it for some percentage of users.

Here are a few examples of when you might want to use a feature flag:

• You want to control the rate of adoption of the feature.
• You want to control when the feature is visible to users.
• You want to control how much risk you are taking with the new feature.

Harness Feature Flags

Feature flags at?Harness?initially started as an internal project. We’ve learned a lot from this project and applied what we learned to the customer-facing feature flags product.

With Harness feature flags, you can now work with them in an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) fashion — flags as code. With this ability, the developers will be able to work in their own workflow (in code). Organizations can standardize the process and steps required to release a feature with?Feature Flags Pipelines.?

Feature flags are a powerful way to manage risk in software development.

Know more about feature flags in my full article on TheNewStack

Thanks!!!