Panamax Open Source Tool Simplifies Docker Management

In a very short amount of time, Docker--an open source tool for managing applications in containers--has become all the rage, and now CenturyLink has announced that it is releasing its Docker management tool Panamax to the open source community. Panamax is targeted to give developers one management platform to create, share and deploy Docker-containerized applications

Lucas Carlson, who has been a mover and shaker on the open source scene ever since he co-authored Ruby Cookbook, is chief innovation officer at CenturyLink and says that Panamax is partly a result of the fact that Docker "captured [his] imagination."

"Docker captured my imagination when I realized that I could encapsulate the entire state of my application system and share it with anyone else in the world," he said. "We developed Panamax to make it even easier to use Docker. Panamax lets you combine Linux containers like Legos, stitching together the best-of-breed containers built by the devops community, and then deploy them anywhere. CenturyLink is excited to share Panamax today with the broader Docker and cloud developer ecosystem." 

According to CenturyLink's announcement:

"Prior to Panamax, running multi-container, multi-server apps with Docker was difficult. Developers needed to learn as many as five new technologies - libswarm, systemd, etcd, ambassador and fleet - as well as Docker-specific best practices just to get started. Panamax packages these technologies and best practices into an intuitive user experience that automates the heavy lifting of deploying complex applications. Developers simply drag-and-drop containers and can easily access the open-source cloud application marketplace. Panamax can run on laptops, virtual machines, bare metal or any public cloud that supports CoreOS like CenturyLink Cloud."

"Panamax joins IronFoundry and ElasticLINQ as cloud-related open-source projects contributed by CenturyLink. Panamax is available today on GitHub under an Apache 2 license. To learn more or to access and download the Panamax software, visit www.panamax.io ."

"As one of the fastest-growing open-source projects in history, Docker is going to change the game in application development," said James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk, the developer-focused industry analyst firm, in a statement. "Panamax is designed to be Docker management for humans, dramatically simplifying multi-container app deployment."

Back when Lucas Carlson was launching PHP Fog, OStatic interviewed him for his thoughts on the cloud computing scene, and you can read what he had to say here.