Containers

Containers are a form of virtualization that encapsulate an application and its dependencies into a single, portable unit. This unit includes everything needed to run the application, such as libraries, system tools, and configuration files, making it easy to deploy across different computing environments without compatibility issues.

Containers differ from traditional virtual machines (VMs) in that they share the host system's operating system kernel, rather than running a separate OS for each container. This shared kernel allows containers to be more lightweight and efficient, as they do not require the overhead of a full operating system.

The most popular containerization platform is Docker, which provides tools and services to create, deploy, and manage containers. Other notable containerization technologies include Kubernetes, which is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications, and LXC (Linux Containers), which is a set of userspace tools for creating and managing system or application containers.

Containers are widely used in modern software development and deployment processes, particularly in cloud computing and microservices architectures. They enable developers to build, test, and deploy applications more quickly and reliably, as well as to scale applications horizontally by running multiple instances of a container across different hosts. Additionally, containers can help improve resource utilization and reduce costs by allowing multiple applications to share the same host system.