Container Technology Explained: How Docker and OCI Containers Work

This article was originally published on bmf-tech.com . Overview A summary of container technology. Experimenting with creating and interacting with containers without using Docker. What is a Container A set of processes that are isolated from the host OS, bundling applications and runtime together. History of Containers 1979: chroot introduced in UNIX OS. 2000: FreeBSD jails appeared in FreeBSD 4.0, an evolution of chroot. 2001: Technology forming the basis of Linux containers appeared in Linux through the VServer Project . 2004: LXC 1.0 released. Linux Containers 2008: Docker emerged. Besides the above, container technologies like Virtuozzo, OpenVZ, HP-UX Container, and Solaris Container also exist. Differences Between Containers and Virtualization Containers A set of processes isolated from the host OS, bundling applications and runtime together. Shares the kernel part of the host OS The OS library part can be chosen by the container Virtualization Configuration differs between host