Sep 4, 2020

Review: Container Storage for Dummies

After reading Running Containers in Production for Dummies this book fell into my hands:


 
 

Container Storage for Dummies is promoted by RedHat and consists of 5 chapters with 35 pages. 

The first chapter gives a short summary about containers. I liked this statement very much: "For example, a VM is like a heavy hammer. It assumes you’re running a server and that the server can host multiple applications. [...] And the container can run just about anywhere, even on a bare metal machine or in a VM — the container doesn’t care." The chapter ends with a motivation why containers need persistent storage: ephemeral containers are transient....
Chapter 2 has the title "Looking at Storage for and in Containers". The key argument here is: "Software-defined storage (SDS) separates storage hardware from storage controller software, enabling seamless portability across multiple forms of storage hardware. You can’t slice and dice storage using appliances or typical SAN/NAS as easily, readily, or quickly as you can with SDS." Both terms (Storage for Containers + Storage in Containers) are given a defintion (just take a look inside the book ;-)).
In chapter 3 the authors want to convince the reader about the coolness of container-native storage with phrases like "Container-Native Storage Is the Next Sliced Bread". I think the main argument in this section is, that RedHat contributes a substantial parts to open source Kubernetes so that RedHats Openshift container storage fits easily in there. And this is done by introducing the Container Storage Interface which can be used by all storage providers.
Chapter 4 motivates why developers like Container-Native storage: because it can be easily managed without SAN administrators....
The last chapter closes with ten reasons to move to Cantainer-Native storage: simplified management, more automation, scalibility, ....

As summary i think, this book is a nice starting point about the problems and possible solutions with storage for containers. It is a little bit disappointing, that openshift is not really explained - but within only 35 pages this is really impossible.
If you are working or starting to work with containers i require you to read this booklet - it is a good start into the container world!



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