We just finished a 7 week project at RightScale to migrate 48 services and 650+ cloud instances to Docker. As a result we’ve been able to accelerate our development processes and cut our cloud costs (a lot). Here we share lessons learned about our experience migrating to Docker and introduce our new Container Manager we added to the RightScale platform to help manage containerized environments.

1. PROJECT SHERPA:
HOW RIGHTSCALE WENT ALL IN
ON DOCKER

2. • Tim Miller, VP Engineering
• Ryan O’Leary, Senior Director of Product
• Mark Dotson, Principal Systems Administrator & Lead Sherpa
• Ryan Williamson, Senior Manager, Engineering
• Tony Spataro, Senior Systems Architect
Panelists

3. Docker Use is Exploding

4. It’s Not Just Dev

5. • Goals, Timeline, Process
• Results
• Demo
• What Went Well/Hard
• Q & A Panel
Agenda

6. • RightScale Product
Strategy
• RightScale Bank
Account
• Productivity Increase
• Technical Staff’s
Career
Project Sherpa is good for everyone!

7. • 1028 running instances
• 670 running “dynamic” apps would be containerized
• Dynamic apps are RightScale developed apps, potentially new versions
released weekly, 52 in total.
• 358 running “static” apps would not be migrated (no ROI)
• SQL databases, Cassandra rings, MongoDB clusters, Redis,
Memcached, RabbitMQ systems, Syslogs, HTTP load balancers,
Collectd aggregators, proxy servers, and VPN endpoints.
Base Camp

8. • Expecting a 5 week hike, but
experienced a 7 week one
• 90% of the Eng Team for 5 weeks,
10% weeks 6,7
• 100% of OPS for 6 weeks, 50%
week 7
• Paused feature releases during
that time
• Split services into 3 groups
• Implemented “Bay of
Containers”
The Climb

9. • Converted 49 of 52 services to containers
• Reduced instance count by 55%
• Translated to a weighted avg savings of 53%
• 44% savings in Production
• 63% savings in Staging
• 74% savings in Integration
• Faster Developer Workflow
• Devs & QA now using laptops for dev/test vs. cloud based env
• Seeing velocity increases due to this less complex, self-contained
setup
• Reworking all our automation tools
The Summit

11. • Time while partially containerized in staging/prod was painful
• OPS/Production Support had to have 3 run books
• Developers were blocked
• Hotfixes to production took more time (2-3x)
• Minimize time you spend in this transition.
• If you are touching legacy apps, be ready for a bunch of Tech Debt
requests. Initially took the stance of “No”, but did end up letting some go
through.
• Don’t underestimate the effort around reworking dev/test/release tools.
• Needed more training for devs on the new branching and build workflows
• Experienced performance issues with Docker & Ubuntu 14.04 as Docker
Engine/host.
• Moving to CentOS 7 will evaluate later versions of Ubuntu
Challenges Encountered/Lessons Learned

12. • Contact us for a personalized demo
• sales@rightscale.com
Q&A