What are Containerization and Containers?
Applications on Steroids
Containers are essential applications composed of other applications and systems that are contained, portable, and runnable using a technology such as Docker. Everything from a simple Minecraft server, to an entire operating system can be placed within containers. Containers themselves are not virtual machines but the program that runs and manages the containers does require virtualization to do it. As Mike Coleman explains, virtual machines are like “houses” and containers are like “apartments in an apartment building”.
Containerization is often confused with virtualization. Be sure to know the difference.
The command to display the running containers is docker ps just like ps is the command to show the running processes on any UNIX/Linux machine. This similarity between running programs (processes) and running images (containers) is a good way to get your head around what a container is, which is closer to an application than to a machine.