Docker Monitoring Made Easy
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2025 10:25 am
Docker is a platform that allows developers to run software in packaged environments called containers. These containers are virtualized operating system (OS)-level elements that share a common Linux server and still have their software, libraries, and configuration files packaged within them. These containers can communicate and exchange information, making it easier to develop and host multiple applications through the CI/CD DevOps methodology. This eliminates the need for multiple virtualized environments that have significantly high resource consumption due to multiple operating systems.
Why Docker Monitoring is Important
Docker’s rise in the software development sphere since its launch in 2013 has been phenomenal. Recent reports suggest that the increased adoption of Docker and containers could costa rica phone number data drive the Global Application Container Market to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% between 2020 and 2025. The increased adoption is not only associated with the cost benefits of deploying containers on virtual servers but also with the flexibility of enabling applications to run in any environment: physical, public, or private cloud. When organizations rely on containerized applications like Docker to run their business services or applications, container monitoring becomes essential to ensure high availability and performance of the running applications.
Why monitoring Docker is a different challenge
The Docker platform is essentially an abstraction layer for your code that allows you to make your code more portable. It makes it easier for developers to create an environment on their laptops that more closely resembles a production environment, easily spin up and down containers, and move them around. Orchestration layers built around Docker, such as Kubernetes, make it easy to move and scale these containers without intervention. You can create microservices composed of many containers.
While this level of abstraction offered by Docker is great for developers, it becomes a limitation for operations teams as they cannot easily determine what is happening in their Docker environments. With Docker's full-stack monitoring capabilities, they can discern which hosts are running which containers, isolate individual containers exhibiting issues, and fix them before they become serious.
Monitoring your Docker host instance and its associated containers with Applications Manager
The most important parameter to consider when running any application is the server’s memory consumption. Deployments can fail if a cluster manager like Docker Swarm is unable to find a host with sufficient resources for the container, so it is vital to understand the host’s memory usage and the memory limits of the containers. Monitoring the total memory used on each Docker host helps in understanding the current state of operations and also in capacity planning. With Docker monitoring in Applications Manager , a quick overview of memory usage can be seen by looking at the total number of containers and the total number of actively running containers contributing to memory usage.
Why Docker Monitoring is Important
Docker’s rise in the software development sphere since its launch in 2013 has been phenomenal. Recent reports suggest that the increased adoption of Docker and containers could costa rica phone number data drive the Global Application Container Market to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% between 2020 and 2025. The increased adoption is not only associated with the cost benefits of deploying containers on virtual servers but also with the flexibility of enabling applications to run in any environment: physical, public, or private cloud. When organizations rely on containerized applications like Docker to run their business services or applications, container monitoring becomes essential to ensure high availability and performance of the running applications.
Why monitoring Docker is a different challenge
The Docker platform is essentially an abstraction layer for your code that allows you to make your code more portable. It makes it easier for developers to create an environment on their laptops that more closely resembles a production environment, easily spin up and down containers, and move them around. Orchestration layers built around Docker, such as Kubernetes, make it easy to move and scale these containers without intervention. You can create microservices composed of many containers.
While this level of abstraction offered by Docker is great for developers, it becomes a limitation for operations teams as they cannot easily determine what is happening in their Docker environments. With Docker's full-stack monitoring capabilities, they can discern which hosts are running which containers, isolate individual containers exhibiting issues, and fix them before they become serious.
Monitoring your Docker host instance and its associated containers with Applications Manager
The most important parameter to consider when running any application is the server’s memory consumption. Deployments can fail if a cluster manager like Docker Swarm is unable to find a host with sufficient resources for the container, so it is vital to understand the host’s memory usage and the memory limits of the containers. Monitoring the total memory used on each Docker host helps in understanding the current state of operations and also in capacity planning. With Docker monitoring in Applications Manager , a quick overview of memory usage can be seen by looking at the total number of containers and the total number of actively running containers contributing to memory usage.