In my view one of the key reasons to do it is to use AWS or the like. Until they have full Docker support on bare metal that is.
P.S.
There are other reasons, e.g. Docker makes it difficult to create a separate publicly visible network interface. But these I feel will go away soon as well.
> Just a reminder, adding VMWare-like virtualization layer (i.e. full virtualization) to the mix will cost you more than 40% of your CPU
… on a couple of microbenchmarks when you define “CPU” to mean “I/O”. Even if you ignore the question of whether KVM performance is the same as VMware's (hint: no), most of the the charts in that paper contradict such a broad statement.
This article only mentions VMware twice in the body, both in passing. The majority of the article is a comparison of KVM and Docker. Many of the points in the article don't apply to VMware at all, or refer to things that are KVM specific limitations which VMware has already overcome.
In fact, the article says "KVM has much higher overhead, higher than 40% in all measured cases." - saying nothing of "VMware-like virtualization" or VMware ESXi at all.
While it's true that containerized "virtualization" traditionally has less overhead than a hypervisor like ESXi, the difference is increasingly small and in most environments negligible, especially considering the added features and flexibility of ESXi vs containers.
From my experience and tests, the performance difference between an app in a container running on bare metal vs the same app running in VMware has been insignificant, so to say that there is a 40% performance penalty is probably disingenuous.
That's not how it works. How many HN stories do you see about jails/zones? How many about Docker?
The ease of use of Docker and the ubiquitousness of Linux make for a disruptive combination.
The 'technically worse, but faster and cheaper' combination Docker offers compared to virtualization is exactly what The innovators dilemma talks about.
I don't doubt that some people use Virtualbox who would otherwise purchase VMWare Workstation or Fusion. Those products have got to be a tiny, tiny sliver of where VMware's revenue comes from, though.
To VMware Fusion/Workstation, which isn't where they make their money anyway. Nobody talks about VirtualBox on the server where KVM is much better supported.
No, because their feature set is similar for many purposes, their stuff works well cross-platform and is free. The way I see it, VMWare was a one trick pony and the horse has bolted, and while expanding their offering in to virtual networking topology provision and serious hardware infrastructure provision has been tried, it inevitably fails in subtle ways.
Simply put: people need transparency in dynamic, modern infrastructure and they don't get it from 'put me in the middle' commercial vendors. Nor does the complexity cost of the mystical one size fits all virtualization solution magically dissipate when marketers invoke the ancient spirits of enterprise requirements.
I'm not aware of many people using VirtualBox for server virtualization. That's where VMWare makes (almost all) of their money.
VirtualBox isn't better in anyway then VMWare - except it is cheaper. That isn't really enough on its own (and there are plenty of more viable competitor of zero cost is all that matters: Xen, KVM, etc etc).
OTOH, Docker is cheaper, faster, much less resource intensive, and less secure. That's disruptive, and much more difficult for VMWare to fight than another conventional virtualization competitor.
You're right of course, however I would posit that VMWare's server popularity is based upon its historical dominance in the workstation space, which is what's under threat. I should have made this clearer. Containers are apples to paravirt's oranges to v8/JVM's dragonfruit.
Yes, and even earlier - before ESX - nobody had thought of server paravirt, and there was only workstation. But these days there are free alternatives that work on all platforms and don't hound you for needless upgrades.
Besides, it feels like the fad around paravirt is over. There's a fair argument that its original server-side popularity was mostly a hack around 'doze's crappy install/config procedure, and 'doze is dying off.
Now we're left with containers, KVM and VirtualBox... the desktop replacement of VMWare workstation being the final nail in the coffin for its dwindling userbase.
VirtualBox would only be a "threat" to Workstation/Fusion. Products like that make up a small part of VMware's revenue. Enterprise is where the money is (products like vSphere, ESX, NSX).
after an announced partnership between the major tech players and Docker.
I take it back and the more the merrier.