Jelastic Version 3.1 Supports Production Ready Secure Docker Containers and Native .NET Based on Windows Containers

Jelastic launches support for production-ready Docker, .NET/Windows, environment export/import and websockets

Jelastic, Inc., the first company that introduced a new degree of freedom in the cloud with containerization for DevOps, announced today a new version of the leading platform. Two of the most impressive new features are the production-ready release of Docker containers and .Net/Windows on top of Parallels Containers virtualization for Windows applications support, highly demanded by enterprises.

“I love the way the Jelastic weaves together so many powerful technologies. It provides a very high-level, comprehensible interface that significantly eases cloud deployments. Especially cool, the the seamless integration between private and public clouds, ” said James Gosling, Father of Java and Independent Director of Jelastic.

Docker Standard

This innovation is intended to give end-users the possibility to create multi-container environments for different microservices, based on Docker templates. Jelastic´s solution for Docker application packaging standard is solving the task of application delivery and simultaneously provides orchestration of multi-container environments in public, hybrid and private clouds.

“We see a trend with companies moving towards using microservices instead of implementing a monolith architecture. With Docker support, our PaaS now gives them an even better experience!” said Joakim Öhman, CEO of Elastx. 

Jelastic delivers a range of benefits that makes Dockers within the platform ready for production use:

- visual environment topology builder for microservices, based on containers

- smart clustering automation for complex applications

- automatic vertical and horizontal scaling

- deployment automation across multiple containers

- high availability of containers on the hardware level, based on software defined storage

- smart containers distribution across the hardware cluster, according to the load

- link support between containers on multiple hardware nodes

- built-in toolset for monitoring and managing container resources

As a result, using common Docker Hub Registry or custom ones enables users to easily install, run and manage any application, service or stack, achieving high stability and full orchestration.

“Without any doubt, the headline act in Jelastic 3.1 is the introduction of Docker. Once again Jelastic were ahead of the curve, and recognised the benefits of containers before mass-market adoption. So now Jelastic use that experience to deliver the optimum solution for Docker containers – solving the security/isolation caveats troubling native Docker deployments, and without the technical and performance limitations facing customers trying to run Docker inside VMs on services like AWS, Azure, and Google,” said Damien Ransome, Service Director at Layershift.

In addition, CoreOS Enterprise Registry based on Quay is available for Jelastic Enterprise customers who want to run their own Docker registry. Enterprise Registry includes a rich UI, access control lists, and powerful tools for teams collaborating with containers behind customers´ firewalls and within their datacenter.

“We noticed a high level of interest in containers from our customers, because it provides extreme flexibility for DevOps teams. We are delighted to announce a major improvement in our production ready multi-container orchestration platform, that delivers a highly secure solution for Docker containers,” said Ruslan Synytsky, CEO of Jelastic.

Windows Containers

Another important milestone in the Jelastic Platform evolution, presented in this release, is implementation of Windows containers´ support, which provides companies with an ability to host web services, that are run on the Windows operating system, inside the cloud. Within the confines of this prominent feature, the following servers became available for the newly added .NET programming language, enabling easier automation of deployment:

- Internet Information Services (IIS) 8.0 application server for handling .NET apps, which supports both Microsoft´s .NET framework and ASPX scripts

- Microsoft 2012 SQL Server (Express edition), intended for storing data and managing SQL databases with the help of Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

- Windows VPS server with the pure Windows Server 2012 OS (and 2008 version optionally installed)

- Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access to containers providing remote control over Windows environments

“I am very impressed that Jelastic decided to choose both container platforms from Parallels and now uses containers for Windows, as well as Linux,” said Alexey Kobets, VP of Server Virtualization, Parallels.

Environment Export and Import

The current Jelastic release includes one more feature, which exempts customers from any lock-in: Environment Export/Import. It allows easy migration of the hosted applications between different Jelastic installations. A user simply needs to export environments and import them to the preferred platform. During the export, all of the information about the environment topology and application settings is packed into a single .json file. After that, a user can seamlessly import the received file to the target platform, and quickly get an identical ready-to-work environment.

WebSockets

Jelastic version 3.1 provides advanced and improved WebSockets support. This technology has been integrated to the Jelastic Shared Load Balancer, so for now, websockets can be used even without the need to buy an external IP address.

Additional improvements and features in Jelastic version 3.1:

- Certified containers of GlassFish 4 & WildFly 8 with advanced automation

- Support of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD)

- 3rd Parties Add-ons Support Advancements

Planned features to be implemented in 2015 Currently Jelastic team is actively working on the integration of Rocket, the container technology from CoreOS, that is the next evolutionary version of a container with security, composability and reliability. Rocket is the first implementation of the Application Container spec, which defines an image format, image discovery mechanism and execution environment that can exist in several independent implementations.

Jelastic plans to move forward in the direction of Rocket and support the Application Container spec, together with the CoreOS team. The team believes that a strong focus on the application container standard will expedite the next stage of the container evolution.

“It is wonderful to have Jelastic providing CoreOS Enterprise Registry to customers, integrating Rocket and throwing their support behind the Application Container spec,” said Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS. “By providing support of the Application Container spec, Jelastic is showing their commitment to giving customers the most secure and interoperable container environment.”

In addition, Jelastic team is polishing the implementation of multi-region support within the cloud, or across several different clouds. The intended outcome is a hybrid cloud and isolation of various user groups/workloads in a variety of regions.

About Jelastic

Jelastic, Inc. is the first company that introduced a new degree of freedom in the cloud with containerization for DevOps. Jelastic is a venture-backed enterprise software company that enables enterprises, systems integrators and hosting service providers to unleash the full potential of the cloud to generate superior ROI and efficiencies. Investors in Jelastic are Almaz Capital, Runa Capital and Maxfield Capital.

For more information visit us at www.jelastic.com, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Jelastic , and Like Us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jelastic

Links:

For more information visit www.jelastic.com, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Jelastic, and Like Us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jelastic

About CoreOS

CoreOS provides the components needed to build distributed systems to support application containers. The strategies and architectures that influence CoreOS allow companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to run their services at scale with high resilience.

CoreOS can run on your existing hardware or on most cloud providers. Learn more at www.coreos.com or follow CoreOS on Twitter @coreoslinux.