ProfitBricks Unfurls Docker Container Hosting Service

In terms of interest among potential customers, Docker containers are red hot. As an alternative form of virtualization, developers have warmly embraced Docker containers because they are a lot easier for them to spin up without requiring the assistance of any IT administrators. As such, it is little wonder that cloud service providers are tripping over themselves to support Docker containers.

The latest cloud service provider to join that fray is ProfitBricks, which this week launched a ProfitBricks Docker platform that gives application developers access to a dedicated Docker host that automatically scales are their application grows. And just to show how serious ProfitBricks is about getting that business the company announced that it is giving developers access to 2,500 CPU core hours for free as part of an early access preview program.

ProfitBricks CEO Achim Weiss said the Docker containers themselves are being hosted on open source Kernel-based virtual machines (KVMs) in order to both isolate Docker containers from one another and enable ProfitBricks to apply the cloud management services it developed for KVMs to Docker containers. The end result, said Weiss, is a cloud computing platform where developers are given access to dedicated infrastructure resources, which eliminates any issues that might step from “noisy neighbors” accessing shared IT infrastructure on another public cloud.

For solution providers helping IT organizations manage those Docker containers is a major new opportunity. Most IT organizations already struggle with managing virtual machines. The number of Docker containers that can run on a server dwarves the number of virtual machines so it’s only a matter of time before most organizations find themselves contending with some form of Docker container sprawl.

In terms of deploying Docker containers Weiss said that thing that differentiates ProfitBricks is the flexibility of the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform. There are no limits relating to the size of the instances of the virtual machines on the ProfitBricks clouds. In fact, Weiss said that anything any IT organization can do on their own servers they can do on the ProfitBricks platform. In contrast, Weiss noted that other public cloud platforms require IT organizations to commit to a handful of sizing options that more often not winds up with the provisioning more infrastructure than they really need.

Obviously, ProfitBricks is not the only cloud service provider that supports Docker containers. But it is one that seems to be committed to making providing that support any way the customer wants versus trying to force the customer to adjust the way they operate to meet the needs of the cloud service provider.