When it comes to modern architectures and computing there is a massive shift. We have moved from the mainframe to the client server to the cloud and are now moving back to the edge. With each one of those transitions, there has always been that guy. Who has to maintain a legacy system that can’t be transferred to the new way of doing things.
At Edge Field Day 3, Avassa talked about how they are tackling the problems from those legacy systems. The on premise legacy system that can’t be moved can now be adapted to a containerized world. Avassa says that we are moving into a container first world. What does that mean?
Container-First World
First let’s discuss what Avassa does. When it comes to virtualization, since the 60s we’ve had virtualization of operating systems and hypervisors. This requires a full install of an OS on top of the underlying hypervisor. Whole industries have been built on virtualization. Then we discovers a new form of virtualization, containers.
Containers take the idea of a virtualized OS, including the extra unnecessary fluff components of the OS and removes them. Containers are reduced down to the required Applications and a limited number of components while the OS, networking, storage is shared. This reduces the overhead of virtual systems to just the components needed for the applications. The big contender in the Containers world is Docker and then many use Kubernetes to manage the containers. Avassa builds a product that competes with Kubernetes for managing of those containers. These containers are meant for the edge for deploying and automating applications.
When Avassa talks about a Container-First World, they see a world where most applications are run in containers instead of bloated VMs. The issue with a container first world is that VMs have existed for a long time. There are plenty of legacy applications that are challenging to transition to containers. Avassa is building a way to migrate those Legacy VMs to a containerized world with Avassa Control Tower.
VMs in Containers
During their presentation at Edge Field Day 3, Avassa showed a VM running inside of a container. What? Control Tower has the ability to migrate a legacy VM into a container. That’s powerful!
During their demo, they show a Windows XP VM running inside their Avassa Control Tower application that they can deploy to other sites. That is a game changer. They even were able to log into the VM Container and ran Minesweeper.
Previously, running legacy applications required you to maintain a VM infrastructure and a separate Container infrastructure, although containers can be run under the VM infrastructure. Now with Avassa Control Tower, you can migrate your legacy systems into a container world.
Fellow EFD3 delegate, Ivan McPhee, called it this way:
They’re not just thinking outside the box; they’re redesigning the entire container ecosystem.
