Containers are the rising stars of IT, and usage is growing rapidly. By packaging application software with just enough “system” to enable them to run, and with standard interfaces to the outside world, containers avoid both the bloat and unneeded duplication of virtual machines and the operating system dependencies of application streaming. The result is a compact, packaged workload that can run anywhere that supports that container infrastructure, regardless of its physical or virtual location or the underlying architecture.
But containers can have dependencies of their own. In particular, applications more sophisticated than the likes of a webserver or Java app typically require stateful containers. These “remember” their data between runs, and must catch up with changes in the wider data environment whenever they restart. That means they require persistent storage – storage that can support the container as it stops and starts, and ‘follow’ it if it moves between platforms.
In this paper, we take a dive into the world of persistent storage for containers. How do the needs of stateful containers differ from those of traditional systems, what are the key enterprise features required of persistent storage, and how can we specify, implement and connect the two for IT and business advantage?
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Content Contributors: Tony Lock & Bryan Betts
