A container is a lightweight, standalone, and executable software package that includes everything needed to run a piece of software, including the code, runtime, system tools, libraries, and settings. Containers leverage virtualization to share the operating system kernel, which allows multiple containers to run on the same OS while maintaining isolated environments for each application. This isolation ensures consistency across different stages of development, testing, and production, making it easier to deploy, scale, and manage applications.
Containers are highly efficient, reducing overhead compared to traditional virtual machines (VMs) because they do not require a full OS instance per application. This efficiency translates to faster startup times and improved performance, making containers ideal for microservices architectures and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. By encapsulating applications and their dependencies, containers provide a consistent environment that eliminates the "it works on my machine" problem, fostering smoother collaboration between development and operations teams. This consistency and efficiency enhance the agility and scalability of software development and deployment processes.
References:
Docker: What are Containers
Kubernetes: Containers
Red Hat: Understanding Containers
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