They are called “aha” moments, flashes of insight that can spark unexpected solutions to tough problems. And two developers with extensive experience in the Docker Inc. container world have encountered enough of these moments for a lifetime.

Elton Stoneman (pictured, left), container consultant and trainer, came across one such moment with a client who was a major Windows user with a large number of environments. He went in discuss what containers would look like if they became part of the client’s operation.

“I said, ‘You can take your applications, you can wrap them up to run these things in containers, you’re still going to get the isolation, but you can run loads more of them on the same hardware that you’ve got,’” Stoneman recalled. “’You don’t pay a Windows license for each of those containers, you pay a license for the server they’re running on.’ The head of information technology said, ‘That’s going to save us millions of dollars.’ That was his aha moment.”

Stoneman spoke with Julie Lerman (pictured, right), software coach at The Data Farm, as part of theCUBE’s coverage of DockerCon Live. They discussed previous and new enhancements to Docker’s interface with Microsoft Corp.’s tools, containers’ impact on enterprise security, how orchestration supports developers, and the importance of continuous education. (* Disclosure below.)

Pre-installed tools save work

Not all moments of sudden insight in the container space will save millions of dollars, but they can add up to an understanding about ways to navigate important tasks in the data-driven enterprise while saving time and extra work. For many developers, this has been especially true where the focus is on moving data.

“I’m very involved in getting data in and out of applications,” Lerman said. “My aha moment was four years ago after Microsoft moved SQL Server over to Linux and then put it inside a Docker image. Holy smokes! SQL Server was already installed, and the container was up like that.”

Aha moments can also come with the latest news. On Wednesday, Docker announced that it had extended its collaboration with Microsoft to make code to cloud application creation easier for developers.

“We had an aha moment this week with the announcement that you can use your Docker Compose files and Docker commands to spin stuff up running in Azure and container instances,” Stoneman noted. “You just write a Dockerfile, and you’ve got your 15-year-old application running in a container and you can run that in the cloud with no changes to code. That’s super powerful for lots of people.”

Boost to security

Expanding use of containers can also help developers with much-needed improvements in confidence among security professionals that potential IT infrastructure weaknesses are being addressed. A GitLab survey of over 4,000 software professionals found that while 69% of developers indicated they were expected to write secure code, half of security professionals struggled to get developers to make protection against vulnerabilities a top priority.

Earlier in May, Docker announced a partnership with Snyk Ltd. to help make security part of app development for developers.

“When security people first get their head around containers, they get worried that if someone can compromise the app in the container, they might be able to break out and get to all the other containers,” Stoneman explained. “It’s so much easier to get defense in depth when you’re building containers. You can sign your images so that your platform doesn’t run anything that isn’t signed, and you have a full history that what’s in source code is exactly what’s in production. There’s all sorts of ways you can layer on security there.”

A Portworx survey released in 2019 found that for three years in a row, container adoption was all about driving developer efficiency. Increased speed and efficiency, agility, and use on multiple cloud platforms were the three top drivers, according to the results.

“The first time I really started orchestrating was yet another aha moment,” Lerman said. “Now I use Docker as a really important tool during development and test. I was ready because I had already gotten used to using the tooling and really understanding what was going on with the container.”

Lerman’s in-depth understanding of container technology highlights the important role developers play in educating colleagues in the community. Aha moments can also mean returning to the time when containers for some represented black boxes of indecipherable tools. This is why Stoneman and Lerman spend a significant portion of their time, including during DockerCon, on the education of others.

“I know a lot of times when people are deeply expert in something, they forget what it was like not to understand it,” said Lerman, during the discussion with her colleague. “One of the really important things, especially for people like you and I who are also teachers, is to try to really remember that moment. I still have held onto that.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of DockerCon Live. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for DockerCon Live. Neither Docker Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE