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CHAPTER 3 The Impact of Containers 19 These materials are © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. The Impact on Processes As was the case with virtualization, containers bring with them a number of positive impacts on processes. The first revolves around management. Under traditional processes, IT operations has a lot of responsibility, which is often not shared with devel- opment or others in the organization. Some traditional processes include ongoing virtual machine deployment, regular operating system patching, new physical server deployments, synchroniz- ing test/dev and production environments, managing security, and a lot more. For small installations, this may all be doable with relatively few people, but at scale, new tools are needed. On the management front, tools such as Docker Enterprise Edition running on HPE hardware can provide agility, portability, control, and security needed to run container environments at large scale. Moreover, there are other indirect, but really important internal IT process improvements that can accompany container deploy- ments. Here are two big ones: » "Patch Tuesday" impact is reduced. Every month, Microsoft releases a swath of updates intended to close holes in its operating systems and application products. With fewer underlying operating systems to manage thanks to increased workload density, Patch Tuesday's impact is reduced. » The server refresh cycle is eased. More workload density equates to fewer servers, which results in overall reduction in workload related to hardware refresh cycles. Also, the abstraction provided by the Docker Enterprise Edition makes shifting workloads to new hardware a breeze. The Impact on Technologies It's not just people and processes that are impacted by the deploy- ment of containers. The very technology that you're using might be impacted, too. With great flexibility comes great opportunity.