A successful CNUT closed-door meeting, a Container Technology Club organized by InfoQ, was held in the Beijing Babbitt Internet-themed tea house on 16th June, 2015. Technology leaders from Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Mi, JD, Meituan, Qihu, Ctrip and other Chinese companies participated in the meeting. The CNUT meeting focused on the future of containers and distributed applications, the impact of containers for cloud computing, the domestic use of containers and how CNUT meetings will run in the future. The participants reached a consensus on the meaning and direction of the CNUT container technology club. CNUT will connect domestic companies who show interest in container technology, improve Chinese companies' influence in container technology through specific actions, and promote the development of container technology in China.
During the past year, container technology has become more and more popular, and InfoQ has been closely following Docker, CoreOS, Mesos, and Kubernetes. More and more container technology-based start-up companies have been developing, and more and more enterprises have been starting to use Docker technology at scale. With this background, the InfoQ China team launched the CNUT container technology club for the purpose of connecting technology companies and individual technologists who are interested in container technology.
The CNUT container technology club is a loose technology organization that intends to promote the development of container and open-source technology in China. CNUT is the acronym for Container Nut. "Nut" signifies tenacity, unity and subversion in Chinese culture, which coincides with the original intention of CNUT.
From the meeting discussion, we know that many domestic companies are using or preparing to use container technology. Common scenarios for the use of Docker containers include continuous integration and enterprise private cloud. The main technology stacks include Docker, Mesos, Kubernetes, Yarn and OpenStack. Non-Docker container technology has long been used in Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Some companies like Meituan, Dianping and JD use Docker in some new businesses with good results. Participants were unanimous that containers and distributed applications are on an upward trend. About the trend of containers and virtualization, Wang Yang, a Huawei technical expert, said:
We have been talking about the relationship between traditional virtualization technology and existing container technology. We note that traditional virtualization technology is more intended for rational distribution of resources, including improving utilization. However, container technology is more application-oriented. In the future, these two technologies will not be an either-or thing. It is more important for them to come into their own, then fuse. The isolation of infrastructure resources should still use traditional virtualization technology, but for packaging and division we can adopt container technology.
On the future direction of CNUT, the participating experts also expressed their views. Cui Yubao, chief architect from Mi, argued that the international influence of Chinese technology is not enough currently. InfoQ can connect domestic technology companies together through CNUT to the mutual benefit of technology, co-build the Chinese technical community, and enhance the Chinese community's right to speak.
Containerisation looks like the future, and InfoQ will keep promoting container technology in China. We hope that the CNUT container technology club will influence the Chinese technology community through more pragmatic output, and its remit may even expand in future.