When it comes to deploying applications, many developers prefer the versatile and scalable Docker platform. The platform enables running numerous containers simultaneously on a single host machine, and its vibrant ecosystem of third-party applications can be integrated into the developer’s workflow with ease. At Works, we endeavour to support developers by curating a list of the top 25 Docker tools to foster faster and more efficient work.
The Best Docker Tools for Enhancing Your Work
One of the significant benefits of the Docker platform is its ability to collaborate seamlessly with other applications. Regardless of your current skill level, the following tips will help you boost your efficiency and pace.
Powerful Orchestrators and Timers Leveraging the Docker Platform
Kubernetes
When it comes to container orchestrators, Kubernetes stands out as a top pick. Developed by Google, this open-source platform has earned widespread adoption by numerous organizations who leverage it to manage their container-based operations seamlessly in production environments. According to Google’s statistics, Kubernetes powers over a billion container processes every week with ease.
Key Considerations:
- Enables seamless scaling of the current infrastructure.
- Allows customization according to individual needs.
- Google conducted a test scenario that can effectively scale beyond 5,000 nodes.
Pricing: Completely Free
The Mesosphere’s DC/OS
In addition to providing distributed systems, container platforms, cluster management, and operating systems, Mesosphere DC/OS (Distributed Cloud Operating System) offers much more. In fact, many industry giants such as Airbnb and Twitter depend on DC/OS’s capabilities to manage their operations. With this powerful platform, organizations can effectively manage complex workloads and distributed environments.
Key Considerations:
- The development process leveraged Apache Mesos for cluster management.
- Manages the entire infrastructure as if it were a unified supercomputer.
Pricing: Dependent on the number of nodes and environment requirements
Nomad
Nomad Planner and Orchestrator are highly regarded for their user-friendly interface and versatility, with support for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Its exceptional capability to handle a million containers across 5,000 hosts within just five minutes sets it apart from the competition.
Key Considerations:
- Ease of scaling, management, and deployment of containers with minimal fuss.
- Efficient management and deployment of non-containerized applications.
Pricing: Complimentary
Docker Swarm for Container Clustering
Docker Swarm represents a robust automation solution that includes an array of programs and extensions. The cluster is managed by a swarm supervisor and made up of individual nodes, each of which is a computer that constitutes the cluster.
Key Considerations:
- Rapid and seamless scalability to any size. By implementing load balancing in the swarm environment, it’s feasible to develop an extremely scalable system.
- To guarantee data security while transmitting between the swarm manager and the client, all communications are encrypted.
Pricing: Free of Charge
Amazon EC2 (ECS) Container Service
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) specialises in container orchestration and offers a speedy and highly scalable container management solution. With Amazon ECS, users can easily and efficiently start, stop and manage containers.
Key Considerations:
- A serverless service that utilises AWS Fargate automatically.
- Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) has recently introduced Amazon ECS Anywhere, which allows existing Amazon ECS users to employ the same operational interfaces and tools with any container-based software. This feature enables customers to conveniently use their existing skills to manage their containerized applications, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. This new capability gives customers the freedom to deploy and manage their containerized applications using the same familiar Amazon ECS tools.
Pricing: Integrate with AWS platform with no additional charges
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Recently, Azure Container Service (ACS) has been renamed Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). AKS empowers users to swiftly and seamlessly develop and deploy cloud-native applications, as it features code for cloud-based pipelines and controls. Consequently, users can efficiently build and manage cloud-native applications with the assistance of AKS.
Essential Factors:
- Offers a range of services that can be used synergistically, such as Azure’s cost management, migration, identity management, and security options.
- Enables you to scale and orchestrate your preferred management tools, connecting them through API endpoints.
Pricing: You are only charged for the software and VMs that you actually utilise.
Tools for Docker Deployment
Jenkins
Jenkins is a highly regarded open-source automation platform that empowers developers to effortlessly create, test, and deploy their Docker-based applications. It is widely recognised as the leading continuous integration tool available.
Key Features:
- Comprises a diverse range of programmes that can be integrated with the stack to make it even more robust.
- It is a Java-based application that can be easily installed and configured.
Pricing: No charge
Travis Community Infrastructure
Travis CI is a Continuous Integration project that allows automated testing of code for all users. The Software as a Service platform provides immediate feedback on the effectiveness of changes to the codebase. Additionally, Travis CI’s services go beyond just testing, and also include deployment and notifications.
Key Features:
- Supports Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems.
- Supports over 30 programming languages.
Pricing: No charge
Shippable
JFrog has acquired the Shippable platform, a continuous integration and DevOps automation solution. This strategic partnership will give developers access to a complete range of cloud-native, Kubernetes-compatible CI/CD tools. This will offer developers an invaluable set of tools to streamline their workflows and expedite their application development process.
Key Features:
- Enables process automation in development from the moment code is committed.
- Provides complete insight into the process and is compatible with a wide range of software.
Pricing: Depends on the package selected
CircleCI
CircleCI is a top-tier Continuous Integration (CI) platform known for its exceptional speed. Its reliable communication infrastructure ensures rapid progress for your company. In addition, CircleCI is incredibly flexible and offers hundreds of pre-built connectors for effortless integration.
Key Features:
- Once a pull request is submitted, a “build” will be initiated. This process ensures that no further build is required when a new fork is created.
- Saves time during the build process by running tests in parallel across multiple containers.
Pricing: Free of charge for up to 6,000 monthly build minutes.
Software to monitor Docker containers
Logic in Sumo
Organizations seeking to enhance their log management processes should consider adopting Sumo Logic, a consolidated logs and metrics analytics platform. This platform enables real-time analysis of live data streams from the web, presents the results visually in real time, and delivers real-time security and operational insights that can be utilized to identify and resolve application and infrastructure issues. By leveraging Sumo Logic, enterprises can maintain a comprehensive view of their data and promptly detect and tackle any aberrations or potential issues.
Key Features:
- Utilize machine learning analytics to forecast threats and other anomalies before they affect the end user,
- Offers real-time updates on issues and potential solutions.
Pricing: Obtain up to 500MB of data daily at no charge.
Prometheus
Prometheus monitoring system is a free and open-source software that utilizes key/value pair metric naming scheme to accurately identify and catalogue time series data in a multi-dimensional data model. This robust feature enables users to promptly track data from a variety of sources, providing an insightful tool for comprehending diverse aspects of a system.
Key Features:
- Multiple data visualization techniques are at your disposal, enabling you to select the one most suitable for your needs.
- All data is stored locally on every server, making them entirely independent of each other.
Pricing: No Charge
cAdvisor
Google’s cAdvisor (Container Advisor) is a live monitoring system that can furnish comprehensive details about the efficiency and resource utilization of containers. It delivers valuable insights into the storage space being utilized by a container and its processing speed. cAdvisor can ensure the seamless functioning of containerized applications and assist in detecting any probable performance issues.
Key Features:
- This daemon runs at set intervals to guarantee that all containers are collected, processed, and exported.
- lmctfy serves as the basis for its container abstraction system, which is innately hierarchical in its structure.
Pricing: No Charge
Datadog
Information Technology (IT) and DevOps teams depend on Datadog, which is an all-inclusive monitoring and analytics solution. It proves to be particularly valuable in tracking and calculating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and can be painlessly assimilated into an event monitoring system for cloud services and infrastructure.
Key Features:
- Comprises an adjustable dashboard that exhibits real-time graphs created from multiple data sources.
- Datadog will notify you via email if the parameters that you select in your monitoring configuration are at risk.
Pricing: Free of charge for up to 5 hosts
Docker Software Available for Free and Open Source
Fluentd
Adopting Fluentd, an open-source data collector, can offer an easy and uncomplicated solution to setting up a standardized logging layer. This tool has many benefits because of its vast plugin support (over 500) and its easy-to-use interface, which make it a robust choice for this function.
Key Features:
- Enables the segregation of back-end data sources and offers a unified logging layer.
- Enables you to interpret data more effectively.
Pricing: No charge
Logspout
When managing a significant number of containers on a single server, Logspout can aid in keeping track of all of them. It collects information from other containers and transmits it to the preferred destination.
Key Features:
- Comprises a modular architecture that supports additional development.
- Facilitates unmanned submission of logs to an endpoint server operating on HTTPS or another protocol.
Pricing: No charge
Clair
The Clair software is a totally free and open-source utility created explicitly for inspecting Docker and containerized apps for security susceptibilities. This software conducts routine scans of containers to expose any security flaws and swiftly reports any problems that it detects.
Key Features:
- Periodically ingests container vulnerabilities from a predefined group of sources based on the user’s preferences and configuration.
- Discovers potential risks in upstream and downstream container images.
Pricing: No charge
Docker Notary
Docker Notary provides a secure and dependable mechanism for publishers and authors to digitally sign their repositories. This offers multiple benefits to both parties by removing any uncertainties about the origin and trustworthiness of the repositories, as well as enabling developers to have faith in the data they consume.
Key Features:
- Administrators can effortlessly manage the flow of new content.
- Notary users can access trustworthy repositories from credible publishers by employing the Update Framework (TUF).
Pricing: No charge
Flocker
Flocker is a utility for managing Docker clusters across multiple hosts. It is beneficial for migrating data.
Key Features:
- Simplifies the management of containerized workloads.
- Our software supports a broad range of storage systems, such as Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Google Persistent Disk, and Pure Storage, among others. We aim to provide our customers with a diverse selection of choices to ensure they have the necessary resources to fulfil their specific requirements.
Pricing: No charge
Flannel
Flannel is a sophisticated networking solution that facilitates effective communication among numerous Docker containers. It addresses the problem of subnet allocation by establishing a mesh network as a virtual layer on top of the current infrastructure. This allows all the containers to link up, forming a consolidated network.
Key Features:
- Makes port mapping procedures more straightforward.
- Creates and manages a multitude of virtual networks.
- Easily manages Kubernetes’s virtual networking requirements.
Pricing: No charge
Commenced in 2005, Project Calico
Calico is an open-source networking and security solution that was created for container applications. It is appropriate for a wide range of use cases, including data planes, various container types, diverse application deployment options, self-managed Kubernetes distributions, managed Kubernetes services, hybrid platforms, and more. By taking advantage of the advantages of an open-source solution, Calico enables companies to utilise the best of both public and private clouds, resulting in greater flexibility and scalability.
Key Features:
- Prevents scalability concerns in Kubernetes clusters during scaling operations.
- Supplies a secure and protected method of network communication.
Pricing: No charge
Consul
Consul is a highly flexible and influential tool that provides a broad scope of capabilities in service discovery, orchestration, and configuration. It allows for quick and thorough deployment, management, and arrangement of service-oriented architectures on a large scale.
Key Features:
- No complex setup or multi-data centre awareness required.
- It’s free to use and accessible on FreeBSD, macOS, Linux, Solaris, and Windows.
Pricing: No charge
Tools for building Dockers
Packer
Packer is an automated tool for producing container and virtual machine images. It is a compact program that accommodates all of the major operating systems.
Key Features:
- Enables the creation of platform-agnostic machine images using a single source configuration.
- Robust and capable of generating machine images across multiple platforms at the same time.
Pricing: No charge
Whales
Whales is a plugin that simplifies the dockerization of applications. It generates the necessary data to ensure optimal performance of the application within a Docker container. Furthermore, it provides a flexible command line interface that allows users to effectively analyze application features.
Key Features:
- A feature analyzer can detect the underlying language, database, framework, and other dependencies of a project.
- The only requirement is a functional installation of Docker, as it operates as a Docker image.
Pricing: Free of charge
Tools for Managing Docker Containers
Portainer
Portainer, the top container management platform, has been embraced by over one million users. Its popularity can be attributed to its user-friendly interface and its adherence to a set of best practices, making it simple for individuals, organizations, and businesses to quickly and easily begin using containers with minimal difficulty.
Key Features:
- A centralized location that oversees and controls an audit trail of all authorized access and privileges granted.
- Tackles numerous container management issues. Furthermore, it allows you to customize your package selections according to your specific requirements.
Pricing: Free of cost
Conclusion
Docker is an exceedingly potent platform that enables the development, distribution, and operation of software. It increases application performance while maintaining the same architecture by decoupling the application from the underlying infrastructure. Docker also provides a plethora of plugins that can further enhance efficiency. These tools are affordable, user-friendly and can serve several purposes, including task automation, integration, and deployment.
