RightScale, Focused on the Cloud, Delivers Docker Container Management

Last month, Docker delivered a detailed report called “Evolution of the Modern Software Supply Chain,” which is available here: https://www.docker.com/survey-2016  Among the many findings in the report, it noted that Docker is central to many hybrid cloud/multi-cloud strategies. In fact 80 percent of respondents using Docker described it as part of their cloud strategy for a variety of reasons including migration, hybrid cloud portability and avoiding lock-in to a single cloud vendor.

Increasingly, organizations large and small need to run container technology alongside existing applications and workloads, and integrate containers with their cloud deployments. Now, RightScale, which focuses on enterprise universal cloud management, has announced the availability of RightScale Container Manager, which allows enterprises to manage containers alongside traditional workloads. RightScale Container Manager bills itself as offering universal visibility, monitoring, and management of Docker containers across clouds as well as virtual and bare-metal servers.

RightScale found in its 2016 State of the Cloud Report that Docker use has doubled in the past year to 29 percent of enterprises, and that Docker could soon become the most popular DevOps tool. RightScale claims it has recently migrated its own SaaS platform to Docker containers, and RightScale customers have also been increasing their usage of containers.

"RightScale Container Manager will help customers operate more efficiently by incorporating Docker containers into their heterogeneous environments," said Tim Miller, vice president of engineering at RightScale. "We recently migrated 49 internal RightScale services, representing 665 out of 1,028 cloud instances, to Docker. By increasing server density, we cut the number of instances needed to support those services by 55 percent and reduced the cost by 53 percent. Just as importantly we increased agility by reducing cycle times for development."

 According to the company's announcement:

The new RightScale Container Manager complements RightScale's existing capabilities for provisioning containerized infrastructure and managing Docker hosts. With the addition of RightScale Container Manager, customers can now provision and manage containers, clusters, and containerized applications as well as their non-containerized infrastructure from a single console. RightScale also complements cluster managers such as Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and Mesos by managing the underlying infrastructure pools and the applications running in the cluster.

 Among the more interesting aspects of the announcement, RightScale has chronicled its own journey to Docker, as it moved its SaaS platform into Docker in production. Get the details here: Migrating to Docker: Why We're Going All in at RightScale.

RightScale had announced its 2016 State of the Cloud Report earlier this year, with statistics on Docker usage. The company will also announce a second report, "2016 State of the Cloud: DevOps Trends" on May 11. Stay tuned for findings from that report.