Lightweight and isolated environments including all the tools necessary to run applications. They have become essential in the field of computing due to their flexibility and efficiency.

What is a container?

• A container is a self-contained execution unit that encapsulates an application, as well as external libraries and other dependencies necessary for its execution.
• It provides an isolated environment, ensuring that embedded applications function identically regardless of the host on which they are deployed.
• It is a lightweight object, as it only includes what is necessary for its execution. It does not burden itself with a complete operating system, and the container communicates directly with the host machine’s kernel to access hardware resources.

What are the benefits?

• Portability: containers encapsulate everything an application needs to run, ensuring that its execution is identical regardless of the operating system. This characteristic facilitates portability between development, testing, and production environments.
• Isolation: each container is isolated from others and from the host, avoiding conflicts between dependencies and ensuring the security of the application.
• Reproducibility: by essence, a container is a self-sufficient and immutable object. It runs identically on the software environment of a desktop machine or a computing grid, and always operates the same over time, regardless of updates or changes in the host’s library versions.
• Scalability and reversibility: the lightweight and easy deployment of containers simplifies the implementation of updates and patches by creating new containers. At the same time, it is just as easy to revert to a previous version in case of issues, ensuring stability in the deployment and integration process.
• Resource management: containers share the host’s operating system kernel, making them lighter than virtual machines that require more system resources.

In summary, containers offer a powerful solution for application deployment, improving the flexibility, reproducibility, portability, and efficiency of development and deployment processes.