Day two of DockerCon saw yet more announcements rolling out, with the headline act being Docker Inc.’s release of Docker Trusted Registry, a move that some analysts have said is its biggest enterprise play yet. As well as Docker’s announcement, we also saw cool demonstration of Docker’s latest capabilities from Microsoft, plus the launch of yet another container-centric startup, and a bunch of annoucements from smaller tech firms hoping to jump on the bandwagon.

Docker releases enterprise-grade Docker Trusted Registry

The big announcement of the day was Docker’s release of the Docker Trusted Registry into general availability. Docker Trusted Registry is a piece of software that allows enterprises to store their container images securely, having been launched in beta last February as the Docker Hub Enterprise. This release comes with Active Directory and LDAP support, audit logging, management features and commercial support, and according to Docker, companies have the option of running it on-premise or in the public cloud. Microsoft Azure is already selling the software in the Azure Marketplace, and both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM plan to do the same.

VentureBeat’s Jordan Novet says this is Docker’s biggest enterprise play yet, and comes after the open-source Docker registry has been downloaded more than 6.5 million times.

“There’s got to be a commercial product in here somewhere,” said Scott Johnston, Docker’s senior vice president of product management.

The Docker Trusted Registry subscription plan will set companies back a minimum of $150 a month, and should give a big boost to Docker’s monetization efforts, if everything works out as Docker’s executives hope. So far Docker claims it’s looking good, with more than 800 organizations said to have expressed an interest in using the Docker Trusted Registry.

Read more from the Docker blog here.

Sumo Logic adds new analytics capabilities for Docker DevOps

Sumo Logic, the cloud-based machine data analytics service, has expanded its analytics services for DevOps teams with a new Docker application. The company’s platform is built to give IT teams visibility across thousands of data streams and help detect and predict performance, reliability or security issues before they happen within their apps and services.

With the update, the platform is now able to monitor Docker infrastructure with a native collection source for configurations, events, logs and stats. The new Sumo Logic application for Docker utilizes Sumo Logic’s advanced machine-learning and analytics capabilities to enable DevOps teams to analyze, troubleshoot, and perform root cause analysis of problems arising from distributed container-based applications and Docker containers themselves, the company said.

Zadara Storage Introduces integrated Docker Containers and Backup to Amazon S3

Enterprise storage-as-a-service provider Zadara Storage has come up with a solution that aims to solve I/O contention issues that can arise when multiple Docker containers attempt to access the same storage resources. The solution, called the Zadara Container Service, works by running Docker containers atop of Zadara Storage’s Virtual Private Storage Array instead of on the server itself – something that dramatically boosts I/O performance and enables applications to be easily backed up to a cloud service that supports AWS’ S3 application programming interface (API).

Zadara Storage sells its arrays according to an infrastructure-as-a-service model, with storage being paid for on a monthly basis. Companies are charged according to how much data they actually store on Zadara’s arrays, which are delivered to the customer, with management services being provided by a cloud service. It’s an approach that gives businesses the benefits of the cloud, together with the high-performance one can only get from local storage.

The infrastructure-as-a-service model for storage is still an immature one, but with many organizations looking to support Docker apps in production, many might decide it’s an interesting alternative to using existing storage systems that aren’t optimized for containers.

CloudBees announces Docker plugins for Jenkins CI Continuous Delivery Platform

CloudBees Inc., has teamed up with the Jenkins community to deliver six Docker-related plugins that enable the continuous delivery of Docker apps with the open-source Jenkins CI project.

Built with Java, the Jenkins CI project provides over 1,000 plugins that support the building, testing and delivery of almost any project. Now, “hundreds of thousands” of Jenkins users will be able to adopt Docker container technologies along continuous delivery and DevOps. Used together, Jenkins and Docker give developers and DevOps personnel a powerful set of tools that streamline the end-to-end delivery process by helping them speak the same language, share the same pipeline processes and work towards the same goals as a unified team, the company said.

“The Jenkins community and CloudBees continue to be on the leading edge of technological innovation,“ said Kohsuke Kawaguchi, Jenkins founder and chief technology officer at CloudBees. “With the newly released plugins, organizations can easily build modern, real-world CD pipelines that involve Jenkins and Docker.”

Weaveworks Debuts Weave 1.0 for Docker Networking

After raising $5 million back in December, Weaveworks is ready for its big push into the container world with the release of Weave 1.0 for Docker container networking. The company also unveiled Weave Scope, a new monitoring and visualization open-source technology that compliments the Weave 1.0 release.

Weave Net is the main networking component of Weave, and enables a form of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) for Docker containers.

“What we’ve done is, we’ve split the product into three parts with Weave Net, Weave Scope and Weave Run,” Alexis Richardson, CEO of Weaveworks, told Enterprise Networking Planet. “If you want to build applications with Docker, it’s no use if you can’t move them because the network piece is not portable,” Richardson said. “So you must have a portable network in order to make the whole application portable – Weave Net is a very good way to do that.”

Weaveworks isn’t the only company that’s offering a way to network Docker containers. Yesterday, Docker Inc. made a big SDN play by announcing support for third-party plugins from vendors like Cisco Systems Ltd., Midokura, Nuage Networks and VMware, as well as Weaveworks.

Read more at Enterprise Networking Planet.

Microsoft demonstrates how to build Docker apps for both Windows & Linux

Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer of the Microsoft Azure public cloud, gave an interesting demo of Docker containers’ cross-platform capabilities when he used it to deploy an application on both the Windows Server and Linux operating systems.

The app’s front-end was written in Asp.net, and the middle tier was written in Node.js. Meanwhile, the back-end sits atop of MongoDB, Russinovich explained. In the demo, he pushed the Asp.net code onto a Linux container, and the Node code to a container running Windows Server.

Microsoft has raised quite a few eyebrows with its close relationship with Docker, but according to Corey Sanders, partner director of program management at Microsoft, Russinovich’s demo created “the first ever multiplatform container application”.

That wasn’t his only trick though. On stage, Russinovich also demonstrated how development teams can use Visual Studio Online to define a customizable continuous integration pipeline to build, unit test, and deploy multiple containers defined using Docker Compose. Meanwhile, Microsoft also announced the availability of the Docker Trusted Registry in the Azure Marketplace, which now allows users to deploy containerized apps from Docker Hub images directly onto Azure.

“When we release Docker containers, Docker Swarm, and Docker Compose support on Windows Server, we will bring together customers and community to offer the most complete container experience, spanning tooling, operating system, and cloud platform, all so you can deploy cross-platform applications simply and easily,” Sanders wrote.

Read more at the Azure blog.

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