If you’re looking for a good advertisement for Docker containers, cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor RightScale Inc. has provided a few compelling reasons as to why one might want to uproot their entire infrastructure. The company has packaged up virtually all of its backend computing into Docker containers, and claims its seeing big rewards in the shape of accelerated development and cost savings.

RightScale took around seven weeks to transition most of its infrastructure into Docker containers, wrote Tom Miller, the company’s VP of engineering, in a blog post detailing the switch.

Docker containers are somewhat similar to virtual machines (VMs) in the sense that applications contained within one can be switched from one host to another, but there are some important differences too. The biggest is that multiple Docker containers can run on a single operating system (OS), whereas each VM needs its own OS instance. As a result, proponents of containerization argue that they’re a more efficient and lighter-weight to package software. Besides this, containers are also more portable due to the way they’re standardized and contain all the ingredients an app needs to run. Proponents say it’s a lot easier to move containers between servers, clouds, laptops and VMs.

Miller explains in his blog post that RightScale has now containerized 48 of the 52 services offered by its main SaaS-based cloud management application. Those services previously used to run on 1,028 cloud instances, but only 670 of them (the dynamic apps) were switched to Docker containers, because static apps like Cassandra rings, MongoDB clusters and SQL databases don’t benefit so much from running in containers.

RightScale has set things up so the instances that run its static apps now support containers running dynamic apps in a hybrid environment, something that Miller says will become a “common model for many companies using Docker, because some components (such as storage systems) may not always benefit from containerization and may even incur a performance or maintenance penalty​ if containerized”.

RightScale managed to reduce the number of cloud instances running dynamic apps by 55 percent, with resulting cost savings of around 53 percent. Miller said the company has seen a noticeable boost in development speed, while the portability and standardization of containers makes tasks like debugging and integration much easier, he added.

“There are certainly more improvements that we will make in our use of Docker, but we would definitely consider Project Sherpa a success based on the early results,” Miller concluded.

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