At first glance, the containerization of applications does not seem to make much sense for the hosted data center industry. Containers are popular because they simplify application deployment, while the underlying hardware and data center infrastructure remain the same.
However, in some aspects that are easily overlooked, containers have brought important opportunities to the hosted data center industry. These opportunities may prompt more organizations to migrate from public clouds to colocation data centers, while also intensifying competition among colocation vendors.
Software platforms like Docker can deploy applications in environments that are isolated from each other but do not require traditional VMware-style virtualization—although running containers in virtual machines is very convincing.
In the past decade, containers (and auxiliary tools like Kubernetes, which help manage containerized applications) have become very popular for various reasons. They make it possible to migrate applications from one server to another without reconfiguring or rebuilding the application. They consume fewer hardware resources than hypervisors. They only take a few seconds to start, while traditional bare metal or virtual machine environments may take several minutes to start. Most of them are built with open source technology, which reduces costs and avoids vendor lock-in issues.
How containers are changing hosting data centers
Maybe you still don't know what this has to do with hosting. Of course, you can deploy a containerized application in a hosted data center, just like deploying it anywhere else. So why should the colocation data center industry care about this? There are several reasons.
From public cloud to hosted data center
Perhaps most importantly, containers make it easier for companies to move workloads between public clouds and other data centers.
This is because, as mentioned above, containerized applications can usually be moved seamlessly from one server to another without reconfiguration. This makes containerized workloads very different from workloads running on virtual machines or bare metal.
If you are running virtual machines or bare metal servers in a public cloud and want to migrate to a colocation center, then you need to rebuild a lot of environments from scratch. You can't simply drag and drop the AWS EC2 environment onto a hosting server. This demand has created tremendous inertia for companies that have built and operated virtual machine-based infrastructure in the cloud.
However, if your applications running in the public cloud (or in a private or hybrid cloud) are containerized, then you can move them to a hosted data center within a few weeks. If you want, you can also move them back to the cloud, just as easily.
Therefore, containers may accelerate the company's trend of shifting workloads between the cloud and colocation centers, while reducing the level of commitment that comes with deploying applications on one platform or another.
Private and hybrid clouds on managed infrastructure
Containers and management tools (such as Kubernetes) simplify the work of building scalable, service-based private or hybrid clouds that are hosted on the same infrastructure.
In the past, if you wanted to turn your hosting infrastructure into a private cloud or hybrid cloud, you needed a platform like OpenStack or vCloud, and these platforms were not easy to scale or integrate with public cloud services. With containers and Kubernetes, you can enjoy huge scalability by default.
If you want to build a hybrid architecture, containers allow you to run the same technologies on your private hosting infrastructure as you run in the public cloud, because all public cloud providers provide full support for Docker and Kubernetes. This makes the interface between public and private services easier to build a hybrid cloud that partially relies on hosting infrastructure.
Make the most of managed hardware
For hosting customers, the third benefit of containers is to provide greater cost returns. In a sense, they provide more effective hardware resource utilization. In other words, because containers do not increase the overhead of virtualization, they allow you to run more applications on the same server at the same cost.
Of course, the performance efficiency of containers relative to VMs is limited. It is not that containers can cut hosting costs in half; in extreme cases, they can be reduced by up to 10% or 15%, and in typical cases, they can be reduced by less than 5%. However, this is nothing, which makes hosting more attractive.
Move between hosting centers
As mentioned above, containers make it easier to move between public clouds and hosting centers. The same is true when migrating from one hosting provider to another.
In this regard, containers will bring more competition between hosting companies. When customers can easily package and move to another provider, the hosting provider will need to provide lower pricing, wider geographic coverage, and higher reliability to maintain attractiveness and market leadership.
in conclusion
It would be an exaggeration to say that containers are revolutionizing the colocation data center industry. In general, containers and the "cloud native" transformation they helped create will not fundamentally disrupt the colocation data center industry as it disrupts other areas of the IT industry. Containers will slowly change the colocation data center industry by bringing greater portability, cost efficiency, and competitive advantages to colocation centers.
Original link:
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/colocation/what-containers-and-kubernetes-mean-colocation-data-centers