Container Solutions Blog
container-solutions.com · Company blog · on HN since 2014
Container Solutions, an Amsterdam cloud consultancy, blogs about containers, Linux capabilities, Raft, GitOps, and microservices.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend its Raft explainer and its Linux capabilities deep dive by Adrian Mouat; it also appears in hiring threads.
70HN people shared it
16linked it in comments
201stories submitted
749story points
2 years agolast shared
2014people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Why I'm No Longer Talking to Architects About Microservices7 people · 134 points · first shared 2025 · 92 comments on HN
- 2Linux Capabilities in Practice4 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 3FluxCD, ArgoCD or Jenkins X: Which Is the Right GitOps Tool for You?3 people · 9 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 4RAFT Explained – Introduction to the Consensus Problem3 people · 8 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 5The future of configuration with Nix3 people · 4 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 6Dockerfile Tips from the Official Images2 people · 44 points · first shared 2014 · 12 comments on HN
- 7Kevin Hoffman: WTF Is WebAssembly?2 people · 13 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Linux Capabilities: Why They Exist and How They Work2 people · 13 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9Predictions for the Future of Computing2 people · 11 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 10All Hail the New Docker Swarm2 people · 10 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 11Is Docker Safe for Production?2 people · 8 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 12GitOps – The Bad and the Ugly2 people · 7 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 13Container Solutions Releases New Container Tech2 people · 7 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 14Mike McQuaid: Entitlement in Open Source2 people · 7 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 15How to waste hundreds of millions on your “IT transformation”2 people · 7 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
pini42 · 2015-04-02
Amsterdam, Container Solutions, http://container-solutions.com. Docker, Mesos, Microservices consultants.
We are looking for the best developers and ops engineers to help our clients to deliver their software faster.
Our main business is consulting in the Programmable Infrastructure/DevOps/Continuous Delivery area with the focus on Docker and Mesos.
Our consultants almost never work more than 3-4 days a week at clients and spend the rest of the time building great stuff, hacking, drinking beer and trying to build new exciting products.
We are looking for both software developers and sysadmins but we especially welcome people that can do both, writing code and making it run in production at large scale.
We encourage our engineers to open source as much as possible, write about it and speak at conferences and meetups.
barhun · 2017-03-21
everyone, please, read the following blog post before using any 'wow!'s in your next exclamation:
RAFT Explained – Part 1/3: Introduction to the Consensus Problem http://container-solutions.com/raft-explained-part-1-the-consenus-prob…
"While Paxos can be described with a page of pseudo-code, our complete implementation contains several thousand lines of C++ code."
jocatalin · 2018-02-01
Container Solutions | Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Zurich | ONSITE | FULLTIME | container-solutions.com
We help clients build confidence with cloud technologies and transition to microservices. We work with cloud native vendors on next-generation open-source tools. We're growing our Amsterdam (HQ) and Zurich offices and creating new engineering teams in Berlin and London. We are hiring for potential, not for skills.
We are looking currently for:
Cloud Native engineers (all offices)
Background in development or operations with some experience in microservices, CI/CD, technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos, cloud (AWS, Google, Azure), cloud automation and provisioning (Terraform, Ansible, Cloud Formation etc). We value consultancy skills and community work (open-source projects, meetups and conference talks, blogging).
Expect mainly short-term projects (2-4 months) mostly delivered from our offices. We automate the infrastructure of our customers and deploy on top of it orchestration layers for running apps and data. We work in small self-managed teams that take full responsibility for the projects. We're not tech/cloud service resellers, we mix the best open-source tools and services that make sense for the project.
All our engineers are encouraged to share their knowledge at conferences and within the company. We consider ourselves a continuous learning company. Switching between projects/roles/offices is possible and quite common.
Front-End Developer…
lizknope · 2022-01-18
Capabilities were supposed to split up the need to having a single root account that could do everything. I'm not sure how far it has gone.
https://tbhaxor.com/understanding-linux-capabilities/
https://blog.container-solutions.com/linux-capabilities-in-practice
raesene9 · 2021-02-25
Linux capabilities are an interesting area, with some nuances (like ambient) which can be a bit unobvious at first glance. Adrian Mouat did a good deep dive post about them and some practical examples of using capabilities . https://blog.container-solutions.com/linux-capabilities-in-practice
unionpivo · 2020-11-14
It's because of linux capabilities specificly CAP_NET_RAW
How to check:
$ getcap $(which ping)
/usr/bin/ping = cap_net_raw+ep
More about it on [1]
https://blog.container-solutions.com/linux-capabilities-in-practice
winkyao · 2019-12-09
You can refer to this article: https://blog.container-solutions.com/raft-explained-part-23-overview-c…
xet7 · 2018-03-11
For example with Docker Swarm:
http://container-solutions.com/rolling-updates-with-docker-swarm/
Some companies have GitLab workflows that also deploy successfull builds automatically, checks are there problems in that deploy, and rollbacks automatically when needed:
https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/473?autostart=false
Such workflows could also be made with for example:
- Huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn
- Flogo http://www.flogo.io
sridca · 2018-01-27
Terraform manages infrastructure; if you also want to manage the installed software in a declarative and reproducible way consider NixOps (based on Nix/ NixOS): http://container-solutions.com/step-towards-future-configuration-infra…
drdaeman · 2017-08-20
I can even use manifest lists and have the same FROM for different archs: http://container-solutions.com/multi-arch-docker-images/ - that's what I meant saying that it's here. Just that it isn't advertised.
The problem is, Docker official images (e.g. alpine, ubuntu, debian, python, node, etc) don't do this, so every Dockerfile that uses those as a base needs to be edited by hand, and you have to trust someone for unofficial base images (or build and maintain them on your own).
berdario · 2017-04-23
Nix
https://jakob.gillich.me/post/2016-03-22-self-contained-development-en…
https://ariya.io/2016/06/isolated-development-environment-using-nix
You can easily automate provisioning and deployment with Nixops:
http://container-solutions.com/step-towards-future-configuration-infra…
But if you need to share/deploy what you worked on, in some place where you might not have Nix available, you can just as easily create Docker containers out of your Nix expression:
http://lethalman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/cheap-docker-images-with-nix_1…
kordless · 2015-07-30
Container Solutions also has a reference cheat sheet for security issues: http://container-solutions.com/content/uploads/2015/06/15.06.15_Docker…
amouat · 2015-04-01
Container Solutions is proud to release today its own container technology, Rocker. Rocker is an amalgamation of ideas and sources from both the Docker and Rocket projects.
http://container-solutions.com/2015/04/container-solutions-introduces-…
Rafert · 2014-11-19
> The minimal Ubuntu 12.02 image is 627MB. Add your own application layer, and your container will most likely weight more than 1GB.
I've read that using Debian (or if possible Busybox) helps in this area. See http://container-solutions.com/2014/11/6-dockerfile-tips-official-imag… and http://jonathan.bergknoff.com/journal/building-good-docker-images for tips.
> Every time your application is updated, check the Gemfile md5 and see if it’s different from the latest build
Wouldn't you need to check Gemfile.lock? With optimistic/pessimistic version constraints you could get newer gems without updating the Gemfile.
_Understated_ · 2020-06-13
Not sure exactly but any job ads I've seen for the likes of Monzo and Starling talk about backend engineers that have a deep knowledge of CI/CD and you don't do that on a mainframe.
Also, Monzo are heavy users of Kubernetes, so again, no mainframe. [0][1]
Starling use AWS and GCP [2]
In addition, the cost of entry of a mainframe system is a high bar when you can spin up a server on Azure in seconds and deploy code to it in a handful more seconds and then scale it to the heavens in yet just a few more seconds... all for less than the hourly cost of the IBM salesman.
I've yet to see any jobs that mention mainframes, Cobol or the like.
[0] - https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend
[1] - https://www.8bitmen.com/an-insight-into-the-backend-infrastructure-of-…
[2] - https://blog.container-solutions.com/starling-how-to-build-a-bank-in-a…