Let's see is there any well known wait and containerized a legacy VM based monolithic app and make it 1
cloud native. 2
And how do you redirect the incoming consumer request from the VM to those containers. 3
So this is a very loaded question and 4
going to make this the last question. 5
So because everyone else is taking my questions and I'm running out of time so this is a long topic 6
and it's a great topic. 7
Basically what you're asking here is we read the question again Is there any well known way to containerized 8
a legacy VM based on monolithic applications and make it clone native. 9
And how do you redirect the incoming consumer requests from VM to those containers. 10
So that is two separate questions. 11
I would do the I'm going to answer the first one first to containerized a legacy VM Docker provides. 12
If you're an enterprise customer they provide a certain level of tools depending on what the app is 13
and it's very framework specific because you know obviously a python app has certain requirements certain 14
dependencies you cannot containerized a full VM that's not a thing because a VM includes the kernel 15
and the kernel drivers and all sorts of things that don't go in containers so you wouldn't wouldn't 16
want to containerized the rest of the OS anyway because that's probably at least a gig of unnecessary 17
stuff inside that VM right. 18
If you don't know if it's a Windows machine it's probably 10 gig of unnecessary stuff so you wouldn't 19
want to do that either but it's not that hard to containerized a legacy app because surely somewhere 20
you have some written documentation or even just screenshots of how you installed that. 21
And as long as you have that basic information you can recreate that in a docker file and really a docker 22
file is just like an automated way of installing something on Linux or Windows. 23
And so if you have those instructions you can do that. 24
And there are tools at Docker they kind of sell them with Docker enterprise. 25
You can basically go back to Docker con twenty eighteen in San Francisco from a year ago. 26
You can look that up on YouTube and they demo some of these tools in their keynote speech where they 27
talk about taking legacy web apps mostly especially on Windows side because those can be like Dot Net 28
framework apps and stuff like that. 29
And then finding all of the parts and pieces to them based on their own package files that come with 30
those apps right. 31
I use these apps have their own package installation tooling and they look at those files and then find 32
all the right pieces and put it in. 33
But I don't know of a tool that I would recommend that is going to just look at the entire operating 34
system and then suck it all in into one container. 35
So I would say look at the information on how that app is installed or even just basically if you don't 36
even have that. 37
Just start looking at you know just start trying with a docker file and you can work on and iterate 38
to get to the point that you actually have it working in the container. 39
Now if you're dealing with the data moving the data around is a separate conversation. 40
You've got to get that data into a volume first. 41
And so that's that's going to be a separate process. 42
I would first first focus on getting the app working then I would worry as a sort of a sub project on 43
how to move the data over if that's indeed a problem where you have unique data inside that old VM. 44
And then thirdly how do you redirect it incoming consumer requests from the VM to those containers that 45
is going to be completely dependent upon your infrastructure. 46
And that is really not a whole lot to do with containers. 47
That has to do with is this a web request. 48
Is there a front end proxy in front of it like an elastic load balancer or a application load balancer 49
or your own third party F5 proxy. 50
Is it is it not a web app. 51
If it's not a web app then you've got to look at how do those connections come in. 52
Because Docker is not going to do that for you Docker doesn't do connection. 53
You know redirect from an old VM that's not a thing that containers or container orchestration solves 54
that that I've ever seen at least. 55
So that's really three parts of a major project. 56
And so when you hire a consultant to help you migrate this is kind of what I do migrate old applications 57
into containers Docker has an entire part of their company dedicated to this. 58
They call it the MTA program migrating traditional apps and they basically send out Tiger Teams to companies 59
for a fee and they'll spend a week on site. 60
I think it is and they'll take your app migrate it and you'll learn everything about it. 61
How help you essentially migrated into a container or copy it in a container get it running get the 62
data moved over and then swap the connections in your case if you don't have any sort of front end load 63
balancing you've got to have basically you've got to have that app running in the container and then 64
figure out a downtime you know it could be just minutes where you're going to redirect the DNS traffic 65
or whatever you need to get that flipped over and that has nothing to do with containers and everything 66
to do with just routing and DNS and networking that basically the same process you would do for moving 67
from an old VM to a new VM when you have to replace VMS over time but that's the Cliff Notes on essentially 68
what it's like to be a docker consultant because you're always migrating old apps and the new stuff 69
for other people and helping them do that.