Graphical management solutions for Docker Starter Tools

Thanks to graphical management interfaces for Docker, even newcomers can set up container environments without extended training.

- Erik Bärwaldt

In professional IT infrastructures, Docker-based container solutions are becoming increasingly popular compared with traditional virtualization setups. The advantages that Docker containers offer are obvious: By sharing the host system’s kernel (instead of each instance requiring a complete operating system), containers are compact and easier to configure compared with typical virtual machines. Moreover, container solutions offer significantly better scaling than virtual machines. They are easy to set up thanks to the encapsulated images; multiple Docker applications can run simultaneously on a single operating system instance. Encapsulating the individual containers also makes it possible to allocate host system resources to them individually. However, as container systems become more complex, they also become more difficult to manage. Graphical interfaces for Docker containers promise to simplify the handling of these systems, offering the benefits of Docker directly to users in small organizations and even to home users who are not afraid to take the plunge. In this article, I take a closer look at the most important graphical tools for Docker management.

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