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16 Containers For Dummies, HPE and Docker Special Edition These materials are © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Infrastructure Agnosticism The best part about containers is that they take hardware agnos- ticism to the next level. Virtualization already does this to a point. As long as you're running an x86-based system, you can run a virtual machine on it and, in general, move workloads around. However, there are some limitations, such as processor family incompatibilities, that can limit virtual machine portability. As you move to Docker-based containers, these limits generally go away. In addition, you can still choose to run Docker on your hypervisor of choice, so you don't even really have to give up vir- tualization to go the container route. Even better, you can shift Docker workloads from bare metal to a virtual machine and then to the cloud. And, best of all, you don't need a developer to do all this. You can begin to containerize some of your existing web applications immediately and start getting the benefits of the technology. Most important, this gives enterprises the ability to choose the best infrastructure that works for their business needs. If you're stumped and don't know where to start, you're in luck, too! There are companies out there — such as HPE — that have gone down the container road, and they have the hardware, software, and services that you need to get a jump start on your own container initiatives. A PORTABILITY PRIMER The size of the workload is important, but portability of container- based workloads isn't a guarantee. It depends on how you've deployed the technology and is dependent on the engine. Today, a number of container formats are available to developers, and they're not all com- patible with one another. I recommend that you standardize on the Docker Container format, which is widely adopted. By doing so, you ensure the widest workload portability options between on-premises deployments and cloud-based ones.