Docker is rolling out new public betas of its Docker app for Windows 10 and Mac, as well as private betas of Docker 1.12 for Azure and AWS.

Docker is making new Docker betas available for Microsoft's Azure, Amazon's AWS, Windows 10 and the Mac available today, June 20.

The two sets of betas (cloud and clients) seem related in that they share the same goals of enabling developers to move apps from laptops to Docker staging and production environments seamlessly and across a variety of hardware and operating systems.

Docker for AWS and Azure are to ops what Docker for Mac and Windows are to developers: The best way to deploy, operate and upgrade secure and optimized Docker IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) installations," said Docker officials in a blog post published on the first day of the DockerCon 2016 confab in Seattle.

Docker is an open source engine that automates application deployment. Docker uses containers, in lieu of virtual machines, to enable multiple applications to be run at once on the same server.

From Docker's blog post about the availability of the Azure and AWS beta:

Docker for AWS and Azure both start a fleet of Docker 1.12 Engines with swarm mode enabled out of the box. Swarm mode means that the individual Docker engines form into a self-organizing, self-healing swarm, distributed across availability zones for durability. Docker 1.12 also introduces powerful new concepts for running complex multi-container apps including: Service deployment API with health checks and rolling updates, built-in container-aware load balancing, and node communication secured with TLS Transport Layer Security out of the box.

The swarm can be scaled seamlessly with new worker nodes joining or leaving as required."

The Docker for AWS and Azure betas are private. Today's new Docker betas for Windows 10 and Mac are public. Docker launched the "limited" Windows 10 and Mac Docker previews in March.

Since June 2014, Microsoft has made it possible for users to run Docker apps on Linux on Azure. More recently, Microsoft has partnered with Docker to bring Docker support to Windows Server.

Microsoft's Azure Container Service (ACS), which Microsoft made generally available in April, allows developers to orchestrate applications using Apache Mesos or Docker Swarm. Under the hood, ACS allows users to create, configure and manage a cluster of virtual machines that are preconfigured to run containerized applications.

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Docker for Azure is now available for public beta testing. Here's what's new since the private beta launched in June.

After six months in private beta, Docker is now available as a public beta for Microsoft's Azure.

The public beta on Azure comes a week after Docker's public beta on Amazon's AWS, according to a December 12 Docker blog post.

Microsoft and Docker announced the private beta of Docker for Azure at DockerCon 2016 in June. Docker added some new functionality during the private beta, including storing all container logs in an Azure storage account for later retrieval and inspection, and the inclusion of a built-in diagnostic tool to allow users to submit a swarm-wide diagnostic dump to Docker for Azure swarm.

According to the Docker for Azure release notes (dated December 9), the Docker Engine at the heart of this release is 1.13.0 RC2.

"Docker for AWS and Azure currently only support Linux-based swarms of managers and workers. Windows Server worker support will come as Docker on Windows Server matures," Docker's blog post says.

Documentation and beta sign up is available at beta.docker.com.

Docker is an open source engine that automates application deployment. Docker uses containers, in lieu of virtual machines, to enable multiple applications to be run at once on the same server.

Since June 2014, Microsoft has made it possible for users to run Docker apps on Linux on Azure. More recently, Microsoft has partnered with Docker to bring Docker support to Windows Server.

read more →