This blog post continues from where we left in our earlier blog post, where we discussed how systemd and podman fits in together to run and manage containers as systemd services. We discussed how we can do the same for a specific containers and learned to create generic systemd unit files. We also discussed few use cases where this integration is useful. As we know, pods in podman are a way to group and manage multiple application containers as one. So we can start them together, manage them together and then remove them together once done. If we do need, we can manage them individually as well. Basics of pods are covered here.
Read More »Tag: Podman
Running Containers as systemd services with Podman
systemd has long been the de-facto standard for managing services and their dependencies in linux. While its good to run applications within containers, to provide a certain functionality and to avoid installing packages on the host OS, the availability and reliability has been an issue. Before you go ahead and start using an application packaged inside that container, you need to make sure that container is up and running. And what if your application consists of multiple containers which needed to be started in a certain order. In fact, there is a growing set of applications which are available as containers so that users can bypass all the headaches associated with installation and setup. So there is a use case for the systemd to take control and manage containers as native services.
Read More »Create and Restore Container Checkpoints with CRIU, buildah, Podman and Docker
CRIU (stands for Checkpoint and Restore in Userspace) is a utility that enables you to set a checkpoint on a running container or an individual application and store its state to disk. You can use data saved to restore the container after a reboot at the same point in time it was checkpointed. It is possible to perform operations like container live migration, snapshots, remote debugging etc.
CRIU is integrated by major container engines such as Docker, Podman, LXC/LXD, OpenVZ, etc for implementing associated functionality. It is also available in respective package repositories for linux distributions.
Read More »Building and managing container images with Buildah
buildah is a open source tool which can be used to build OCI compliant container images without using docker engine. It can also be run in a rootless mode, thereby reducing the attack surface area and also inside a container image itself.
You can use buildah to built container images from existing container images, from Dockerfiles and from scratch (read empty images) as well. OCI images built using buildah are portable and can be run on different hosts as well with different container engines such as CRI-O, Podman, Docker Engine, etc.
Using Skopeo to work with Container Images in a dockerless world
Skopeo is one of the specialized tool that performs various operations on container images and image repositories.
Skopeo can perform operations which consist of:
- Copying an image from and to various storage mechanisms. For example you can copy images from one registry to another, without requiring privilege.
- Inspecting a remote image showing its properties including its layers, without requiring you to pull the image to the host.
- Deleting an image from an image repository.
- Syncing an external image repository to an internal registry for air-gapped (aka offline) deployments.
- When required by the repository, skopeo can pass the appropriate credentials and certificates for authentication.
Working with pods with podman generate and podman play
Podman pods are a way to manage group of application containers together as one pod. It is similar in that way to Kubernetes pods. While you may add many containers as you need with a pod, it would be easier if you can export and import pod manifests entirely. This would allow you to easily create pod with requisite containers rather than running a bunch of commands. You can also use generated manifest to create kubernetes pods. podman generate is a way to generate pod definition manifest yaml format. Similarly, podman play is to import pod definition and spin up a pod for you.
Create Kubernetes clusters with Kind, rootless Docker and rootless Podman
Kind is a tool which can be used for running local multi node Kubernetes clusters. Kind was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself and associated extensions, but may be used for local development or CI. With the Kind, you can spin up a multi node Kubernetes cluster in couple of minutes, perform your work and then wind it down. And nobody need to worry about the Bill! Starting with kind 0.11.0, Rootless Docker and Rootless Podman can be used as the node provider of kind. Its not running kubernetes in rootless mode as some component of kubernetes stack cannot run rootless yet, however it is certainly a step in that direction.
Read More »Spinning up and Managing Pods with multiple containers with Podman
docker-compose is a popular choice to spin up applications needing multiple containers and run them. It allows to define the configuration in a simple yaml format and with few commands, you can create/manage all your application containers at once. Podman does not have a counterpart to the docker-compose command. There is a project in the works called podman-compose, which is supposed to do the same basic thing as docker-compose.
However Podman uses a concept called pods. Pods are a way of grouping containers together inside their own namespace, network, and security context. You can start and stop the whole pod at once to manage your application.
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