Bootable containers
About a decade ago, the tech world experienced a major revolution with the birth of containers. And now, it looks like we might just be on the verge of an evolution with the rise of bootable containers. Bootable containers are a game-changer, not just for running apps but for managing entire operating systems. In this article, we’re diving into this new technology and why it matters to businesses.
What are bootable containers
First, let’s start with a disclaimer: at the moment of writing, Bootc, the key component of bootable containers, has not even reached 1.0. So there are factors that are uncertain and a lot can change.
But with that being said, there’s also already a lot to share about this new concept.
Bootable containers extend the concept of traditional containers by including a full operating system environment. Unlike typical containers that run isolated applications, bootable containers encapsulate the entire OS, allowing for complete system booting and operation from a container image. With bootable containers, it’s possible to use a single CI/CD workflow, image scanning tools, or more, to deploy both OS or application containers.
Key benefits
Now we have a grasp of the concept of bootable containers, let’s take a look at the 2 key benefits.
- Transactional updates
Bootable containers facilitate seamless, in-place updates of the operating system using container images. This reduces maintenance costs, ensuring higher availability and improving system reliability. Transactional updates mean changes can be rolled out or rolled back quickly, minimizing disruption to operations.
- Portability
By leveraging standardized container formats, bootable containers ensure consistent deployment across various (cloud) environments. This consistency reduces compatibility issues and accelerates the development-to-production pipeline, enhancing developer productivity. Bootable containers effectively bypass/replace legacy infrastructure toolchains to provision VM’s with operating systems.
How will the adoption of bootable containers provide value for your company?
It’s clear that bootable containers are a catalyst for true DevOps integration, aligning development and operations teams more closely than ever. It supports the trend towards Platform Engineering, where developers have the autonomy to propose or implement changes through the same processes they use for applications builds. Through this streamlined workflow, developers can rapidly build and deploy both applications and operating systems, leading to faster development cycles and more efficient infrastructure management.
The level of autonomy and the fact that developers can actually focus on writing code without having to deal with complex infrastructure operations will certainly increase the Developer Experience and make for happy developers. And we all know: happy people are more productive and tend to stay longer at their employer.
More information
As you may expect from us, we will keep a keen eye on the further development of bootable containers and publish updates when there’s more to share. Would you already like to explore the concept of bootable containers further in the context of your company? Contact us today for a pressure-free chat.
