The Docker & Container Ecosystem 101

A presentation at DockerCon Live 2021 by Melissa McKay

Did you panic when Kubernetes announced the deprecation of Docker runtime support? Are you new to Docker and containerization, or have you gotten lost in all of the terminology? Attend this session to conquer your fear with knowledge, and breathe a sigh of relief.

There have been a lot of changes and achievements in the container space and related toolsets over the last few years, which is nothing less than expected in such an active environment. In the pursuit of open standards, Docker’s contributions to the Open Container Initiative (OCI) include the basis for the runtime, image format, and registry specifications. Understanding the differences between these components is essential to appreciating the full Docker tech stack and having the ability to evaluate alternative and complementary solutions.

This session is for those that are new to Docker or containers in general or anyone that would like an up-to-date refresher on the pieces and parts of this ecosystem that enable us to build, manage, launch and run our containers. You will leave with a solid understanding of container terminology — containers vs container images, container registries, container runtimes, container orchestration — and how these components all work together.