Best Practices To Optimize and Improve Docker Performance

by HashRoot

What are Docker Containers?

The cloud industry has revolutionized with Docker containers. Since they are designed in a way that to run anywhere, they beat other virtualization methods.  Even though the Docker containers offer remarkable benefits including high security and optimized environment, they can provide better performance at an enhanced level if developers try to squeeze out of Docker by further optimizations.

With this article, we are explaining some best practices to improve Docker performance and explains some sorted solutions that help you optimize Docker deployments. This article also helps you with a clear-cut idea about the business benefits of Docker, causes for slow running, the need for improving the Docker container performance, and the important performance metrics to monitor.

Let's dive in..

Business Benefits of Docker Container

The world of IT has gained its maximum momentum with containerization and is considered an efficient way of increasing productivity in the development process. In recent studies, it is depicted that the software industry is growing faster with the arrival of containerization. The Docker acts as a platform for the easy creation, deployments, seamless management, and distribution of applications in containers. In recent statistics, the number of adoption of Docker has reached its maximum and the businesses multiply the containers. The programming frameworks such as Java, Ruby, Node, and PHP can be used in the containers that help the developers to manage the applications easily.

Some key benefits of using Docker containers are :

  • Cost savings and fast deployments

One of the important reasons why businesses adopt Docker containers is their cost-effectiveness. It can offer steady revenue over the long term with a better solution. By reducing the infrastructure resources, the use of Docker facilitates cost savings and it can deploy applications swiftly as well.

  • Automation

With Docker containers, developers use repeatable infrastructure and configuration, which speed up the whole development cycle. Similarly, this makes the deployments and delivery faster for new application containers. A containerized application is isolated from other applications which run in the same system. That is, these applications never mix up and hence the maintenance of containerized applications is easier than any other application. The automation helps businesses to concentrate on their goals without getting worried about how their application works.

  • Standardization

The Docker containers offer better consistency which results in standardization of the environment. This is one of the biggest benefits of using Docker containers. Since it offers repeatable environments, production environments and testing, the engineers can focus on fixing the bugs within the application. Hence, it increases the time for feature developments with zero defects.

  • Multi-cloud platforms

Since Docker containers add individual support and high portability features, almost every cloud computing platform adopted Docker. Businesses depend on managed services such as google cloud consulting services (GCP) and AWS consulting services since they adopted containerized applications to provide their customers the best experience. The Docker containers also work with Azure and OpenStack as well. To know how Azure cloud brings benefits to business with Docker containers, you can connect with the best Azure consulting service providers.

How does the Docker container work?

Containers are considered as the origin of Docker. This open-source solution helps in managing the containerized applications, where these containers are platform-independent. That is, Docker containers offer support to both Windows and Linux-based platforms. Hence, before moving to the optimization process for the Docker container, it is important to understand how the Docker system works and what all factors affect its performance.

Docker Workflow:

The developer uses the Docker CLI, which is a client that can interact with the Docker daemon. The host gets instructions from the Docker client to create, run and distribute the Docker images as the containers. The Docker Daemon can manage multiple objects which are associated with the Docker instance. Daemons listnes the instruction from the Docker client, once it starts and runs the container instances. Similarly, the Docker CLI can also control containers such as deletion and restart. The same can be done from a remote system by the developers using Docker REST API, which acts as an HTTP protocol compliant point that has contact between the remote client and daemon.

What causes Docker containers to run slowly?

The Docker application containerization tools help in leveraging the business benefits since it makes the transfer of the applications much easier by eliminating mobility issues and better consistency. Even if you mess up with the wrong tool, everything can be restored in the containers making the application management a bit more flexible and convenient. But this complex container system, which depends on multiple factors sometimes makes the Docker run slowly. Inadequately allocated resources, unmanageable Docker image size that used to create the containers, large context size of the file, misconfiguration, are some of the major causes that lead the Docker to get slow performance.

How to improve Docker performance?

For better business operations, speeding up of Docker performance is important. There are multiple methods to make the Docker containers faster. Some of the major performance metrics to monitor and optimize for the better performance of Docker are explained below.

  • Docker Image Optimization

An entire Docker application performance can be improved by optimizing the Docker image. To improve Docker performance by minimizing the Docker image, you can follow the steps below:

  • Using the code "Docker images", you can check the Docker image size. It is important to keep your Docker file minimal.
  • Ensure the file size is not that long.
  • Use the code "Docker build -t [Docker image name]" to show context size.
  • Create a file with ".Dockerignore" if the file is too big. It should be created in the root directory of the context.
  • Add the unwanted files to the newly created file. Docker excludes the listed files during the creation of the image.
  • Removal of Interdependencies

While installing the dependencies, the Debian-biased Docker images such as ubuntu generate some space for additional binaries and files. Many of the generated sub dependencies, which are considered as interdependencies are not used later. These may not be cleaned automatically and consumes a lot of space that makes the Docker container run slow. Hence to improve the Docker performance, you can clean up the interdependencies. To remove them manually, use the given below code:

  • apt-get clean: to clear the package files
  • apt-get autoclean: to clean the obsolete packages
  • apt-get autoremove: to clear the interdependencies of removed packages
  • Use of Dedicated Resources

It is common in cloud environments that the virtual machines share the resource hardware with the other virtual machines contained in the same server. To improve the Docker performance, container hosting can be done on dedicated hardware of Bare Metal Cloud. Since these containerized applications do not share the system resources, the applications can fully utilize the hardware resources.

  • Use of Layer Caching

To improve the speed of Docker image building, you can use layer caching. When the Docker rebuilds the images, it searches the cache for the layers that contain similar signatures. This significantly improves the Docker performance efficiently.

  • Proper Resource Allocation

Since the orchestration managed a large group of containers, planning of resource allocation should be carried out properly. Proper planning of resources allocation can improve Docker performance. Insufficient RAM and slow CPU can become a bottleneck that slows down the Docker performance. If you found the Docker is not performing well, then you should check the memory allocation and resource utilization are proper and works well. You can connect with the Docker container management service provider to get help if you are facing trouble with Docker performance.

Wrap Up

Docker containers offer remarkable benefits to businesses since they are designed to run anywhere. Docker has a significant role in revolutionizing the cloud industry. Even though Docker comes with a lot of advantages, sometimes users experience the performance of Docker is getting slow.
With this article, we explained some major business benefits of Docker containers, the Docker workflow, causes for the Docker getting slow, and some important metrics to improve Docker performance. The expert team of Docker consultants at HashRoot provides the best Docker consulting services, and we are available 24*7 to assist you with our transparent services all around the globe. You can get connected with us in case you face any issues related to Docker implementation and maintenance.