Container Management is the process of organizing, adding, or replacing large numbers of software containers. Container management uses software to automatically create, deploy, and scale containers. This gives rise to the need for container orchestration—a more specialized tool that automates the deployment, management, scaling, networking, and availability of container-based applications.
Container management uses a platform to organize software containers, which may also be referred to as operating-system-level virtualizations. The container management platforms optimize efficiency and streamline container delivery without complex, interdependent system architectures.
Containers have become popular as enterprises use DevOps for faster development and deployment of applications. Containers include everything needed to run software, including files and libraries. Containers combine the libraries of an application or microservice into one deployable unit that does not deplete the CPU or memory resources of the host operating system. Container management includes scheduling, application security, storage, and monitoring.
Container management is necessary when enterprises rely on containers to quickly deploy and update applications. Container management software is designed to handle the rapid changes in DevOps strategy.
Docker container management software and Kubernetes container management make orchestration, security, and networking easier. Container management software systems are available as both open source and proprietary commercial products.
Before storage networking, computing environments used disks directly attached to servers to store data, while clients connected to servers over an Ethernet network using TCP/IP. Then Sun Microsystems developed the Network File System (NFS), which allowed data to be shared over an Ethernet network. NFS enabled local users to access files on a remote machine over a TCP/IP network and access them just as if they were on the local hard drive. Microsoft later created the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol to enable access in the same way for Windows computers.
