Containers’ technology for running distributed software applications is off-the-grill hot, and that means they’re still a bit too hot to handle for some. Orchestration and storage snafus, for instance, can pop up when users run large numbers of containers in production. An ecosystem within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation is developing to sand down the rough edges.

There is no lack of container technology on the shelves, according to Cheryl Hung (pictured), product and DevOps manager at StorageOS Inc. “We don’t have best practices and a lot of experience in how it’s done,” she said. That is why when working with containers, one may bump into issues and wonder, why didn’t someone think of this?

Hung spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Lauren Cooney (@lcooney), founder and chief executive officer of Spark Labs Consulting LLC, at the KubeCon CloudNativeCon EU event in Denmark. They discussed ongoing efforts to fill in the blanks in container use.  (* Disclosure below.)

Handmaids to fussy containers

One big problem with containers is that they’re designed to be stateless, so users don’t have to worry about running them in different environments. “But clearly there is a need for storage. If you’re doing something interesting with your application, you have to make a decision about where to actually store the data at the end of the day,” Hung stated.

StorageOS tackles this with its persistent storage for containers — an abstraction layer for storage that runs on top of any infrastructure.

There is more good news: Kubernetes, a container orchestration management system, is a lot closer to easy than it was a couple of years ago, according to Hung. “I think it’s great actually that Kubernetes is now becoming boring. People are standardizing on one thing, so we’re not duplicating a bunch of effort,” she said. 

What else is out there to whittle down the complexity of running containerized apps? Istio service mesh to connect, manage and secure microservices looks promising, Hung pointed out.

When developers and other techies come together to share their woes and wins in container use, great ideas can tumble out, according to Hung. For instance, the CNCF community’s openness to new code and ideas from users fosters this kind of loose innovation. Hung is the founder of the Cloud Native Meetup in London.

“Meetups are a brilliant way for people to get into this space, find out what the community is talking about, and then also to learn and to teach others,” she concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon EU. (* Disclosure: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CNCF nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE