Scaling Enterprise Applications With Advanced Container Management Techniques

Containerized applications are challenging just to maintain and keep healthy. Container orchestration, continuous deployment and constant backup can take a toll on your memory and storage capacity and cause network latency. Or simple container misconfigurations can lead to severe loss of memory or storage. Then, as those same apps are scaled to tens of thousands of instances, the challenges rise exponentially. 

Luckily, with advanced container management techniques, you can not only manage these challenges but make them work in your favor. Containers and Kubernetes have increased visibility to every process with logs, metrics, and traces streamed in real time to observability tools or to the CLI. Here are some of the top strategies for scaling enterprise applications and making containerization seamless. 

How Enterprise Container Management Helps Scale Applications Faster

Enterprise container management is the process of managing containerized applications in a large scale enterprise environment. Container management usually includes orchestration, deployment and monitoring of the applications to maintain hundreds of thousands of services spread globally. Many organizations choose containerized applications because of the ease of scalability, portability and fast deployment. While this usage doesn’t create unique problems for smaller scale applications, it can handle misconfigured containers at a massive scale which may lead to greater issues or a potential system crash.

Containerization means that applications work in isolation, which is a double-edged sword. While isolation protects each application from interfering or pulling resources from other applications, it also can make configuration complex and make security more difficult. Enterprise container management ensures containerized applications can scale in isolation while still prioritizing security, managing resources and avoiding performance bottlenecks together. 

Best Practices and Techniques To Quickly Scale Containerized Applications

Scaling containerized applications quickly and effectively requires advanced techniques. One of the more sophisticated methods is auto-scaling. Auto-scaling is where active containers are automatically added or removed, constantly adjusting to the current resource utilization of the application. By only using the necessary containers, auto-scaling helps manage workloads efficiently. Another advanced technique is load balancing. Load balancing distributes traffic evenly across containers, ensuring optimal performance. 

Fleet with Rancher enables users to continuously deliver a reliable experience while managing 10 or more clusters at any given time. Rancher utilizes the CAPI operator to ensure successful cluster management, allowing users to scale containerized applications with ease.

Experienced admins may also use mini-cluster management strategies, like using multiple Kubernetes clusters to achieve better scalability. When aiming for multi-cluster management, some best practices include cross-cluster communication and centralized control. 

Resource use is also a significant concern in containerized environments. To optimize resource utilization, admins can leverage techniques like right-sizing containers and resource quotas. This ensures a “Goldilocks” approach: Applications don’t have too few resources to run effectively and perform their task, nor do the applications have too many resources so that they end up wasting energy; they have just the right amount. Strategies like right-sizing containers and resource quotas optimize resources by boosting cost efficiency as well as performance.

Enhancing Security in Container Management 

Security can be difficult when working with a large number of containers. The more containers you have, the more potential attack surface you have. To help scale your applications safely, here are some tips for enterprise container management security:

• Outline essential security practices like image scanning, runtime security and access control.
• Create clear security policies, such as baseline requirements and audit logging.
• Use secure container registries to store and manage container images.
• Maintain a secure registry, including access management and vulnerability scanning.
• Implement continuous monitoring in all containerized applications.
• Have a plan for how to respond to critical incidents and how to remedy them.
• Enhance security measures and defensive strategies by implementing zero trust security.

Improving Efficiency With Advanced Management Tools

The best enterprise container management techniques in the world can’t help you if you don’t have the right tools. Advanced management tools help you use resources efficiently, scale applications faster and improve coordination between applications. For example, Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration platform that helps automate many tasks involved in keeping containerized applications running. Kubernetes is a valuable tool as it helps automate deployment and creates Helm charts and operators, enhancing the efficiency of applications. It also has rolling updates, which minimize downtime and enable seamless improvements to applications.

Kubernetes is a powerful and popular tool for scaling containers, but has a steep learning curve and rapid rate of changes, thanks to its open source community. SUSE® Rancher Prime makes it easier for teams to leverage the power of Kubernetes, without getting lost in the challenges of managing disparate systems.

Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are additional tools to help improve application scaling. CI/CD pipelines streamline the development and deployment of containerized applications. When working with CI/CD on containerized applications, be sure to use best practices, such as automated testing, frequent commits, error tracking and parallel testing. 

Admins who want to aggressively scale containerized applications may need other advanced tools for monitoring and analytics. For true resource optimization, admins need to use monitoring tools to keep a finger on the pulse of container performance, resource usage and application health.

Scaling Applications Across Your Enterprise

Scaling containerized applications at the enterprise level requires advanced container management techniques. Strategies such as auto-scaling, load balancing, mini-cluster management and various security measures are all ways to help your applications scale faster and more securely. Adopting these techniques, along with powerful tools like SUSE Rancher Prime, will give you a competitive edge in the market and allow you to scale and implement new features in containerized applications faster. 

Learn how Rancher Prime and SUSE’s additional enterprise container management solutions can help you scale faster without compromising security. 

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