Containers are the new black. These new software packages have upended traditional software deployments, with Docker pioneering the modern container movement.
Opening up a new range of possibilities across multiple machines.
Now, Microsoft has joined hands with the company to release a new open source project that is basically a container for containers — a solution that aims to solve issues that are faced by organizations that build and maintain distributed applications.
The new specification, unveiled Tuesday, goes by the name of Cloud Native Application Bundles.
CNAB, for short.
Cloud agnostic, and based on technologies like JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), OpenPGP, and of course Docker containers. In addition, Microsoft and Docker also collaborated on a new tool to enable CNAB specifications, called Duffle.
Nice name.
Patrick Chanezon of Docker explained the deal in the announcement post:
“Real-world applications can now span on-premises infrastructure and cloud-based services, requiring multiple tools like Terraform for the infrastructure, Helm charts and Docker Compose files for the applications, and CloudFormation or ARM templates for the cloud-services.”
The use of these multiple tools requires carrying out separate management activities presently, which as you can expect complicate matters.
CNAB aims to simplify them.
As Microsoft detailed in their announcement post, CNAB streamlines the handling of distributed applications, which basically takes away a fair amount of the management grind. And they can be applied to any cloud service, from Azure to on-premises OpenStack, Kubernetes to Swarm.
To top it all off, the Duffle tool is adept at supporting all of the core capabilities of working with CNAB, and can actually be used right now. It even comes with a graphical user interface.
Microsoft has also released a Visual Studio Code extension that lets users build and host CNABs.
Yes, that’s now a word.
