One of the core issues that has inhibited the adoption of container technologies, like Docker, is the lack of support for persistent storage required for stateful applications and microservices, says Jack Norris, senior vice president, Data and Applications, MapR Technologies.
Container technology has come a long way in the past several years, but when it comes to storage, the options have been point solutions for file and block storage, with no comprehensive, secure data services for stateful containers. As a result, even as enterprises have moved toward using container applications in production, they've struggled to do anything more complex than a stateless web application, Norris says. Without data persistence, applications cannot scale elastically to meet business requirements, nor survive routine infrastructure failures.
"Agile enterprises today need their operational and analytical apps and microservices to be "stateful" or aware of not just the "now," but historical information and context as well," John L. Myers, managing research director of Boulder, Colo.-based industry analysis firm Enterprise Management Associates, said in a statement Tuesday.
MapR Technologies moved to change all that this week with the release of the Converged Data Platform for Docker, persistent storage for containers that offers state access to files, database tables and message streams from any locations. The platform includes the MapR Persistent Client Container (PACC), which allows stateful applications and microservices to access data for application agility and faster-time-to-value.
