How Fly.io uses Docker (without Docker)

Most users on Fly.io deliver their apps as Docker images. But we don't actually use Docker to run your application. How does that work?? In this video I'll take you behind the scenes of how Fly.io runs applications on fast-booting micro-VMs - without running Docker.
Original blog post by Thomas Ptacek:
fly.io/blog/do...

[@thedavymac]

What? An actually relatable human with a such a good understanding of their tech that they can crack jokes while educating??? All in 4 minutes? Bang on dude. More please!!!

[@KentCDodds-vids]

Please make more videos

[@flydotio]

OK FINE

[@DanCaddigan]

+1 to what Kent said. You made something relatively unapproachable seem relatively simple.

[@bennihtm]

It's actually so refreshing to see a video from a company that's not just using tts! Kudos for explaining the topic so well, and making it interesting! There needs to be more of this!

[@tt.kb_]

I didn’t particularly need any of this info but I’m so glad I stumbled on this video. Please make more, you are great at this.

[@AnthonyDMays]

What a fantastic video, I love this! Now I wanna go explore the Docker API to see how hard it would be to build this myself.

[@flydotio]

You should!!! It’s kind of awesome

[@kainkamote917]

Short, straight to the point, and informative. Keep it up.

[@jjbetspro]

It's her personality, I saw the "forgiven" ad on reddit. You're very good, now I'm hooked 😂

[@salman.1st]

First: I don't need this. Second: I watched the video and I am impressed, I want to make videos for my own product as well!

[@mattmaloney5988]

Nice to hear these things explained by someone who actually understands it.

[@alexclark6777]

Understandable, well presented, and some wonderfully human elements to the presentation without it being laced with memes. Other instructional YT'ers would do well to pay attention to this format. I'm looking forward to watching more.

[@pradeepbisht3397]

please make video on anycast

[@flydotio]

you got it friend

[@pmis2362]

This video clarifies my query about why do we need docker to run containers if all I want is isolation. Thanks 😊

[@unplayr]

Hi, nice explanation, thank you. I'm looking forward for the anycast video.

[@hamadrehman853]

awesome video. piques my curiosity to play with images on my own

[@MarkGreenwood-t4o]

Are you sure it's not pronounced "contai-NERD"? 🤓😆 Why can't more people make complex technical topics this easy to understand? This is awesome.

[@SteveDotNet]

Great information! Thanks! And definitely interested in hearing more about the AnyCast network.

[@bradpreston9872]

Phenomenal video! The explanation was so easy to follow.

[@vadud3]

Thank you for explaining it so well! Looking forward to see more videos to explain all the different pieces you covered.

[@moalshakoush8720]

This video was so informative and clear, love it. Please make more videos!

[@ryandotfurrer]

Incredibly well explained, thank you for this!

[@privat9445]

You are a great communicator

[@xomiachuna]

Great explanation, looking forward to the anycast video

[@chrislanejones]

Nice, never heard of Firecracker microVM before.

[@willi1978]

me neither, in the beginning i thought it will be about kubernetes

[@simeongriggs543]

Wait, it's NOT pronounced "contai-nerd"?!

[@vaisakhkm783]

😂 that a funny way to say it..

[@hydrokat143]

I will start pronouncing it this way.

[@shafiq_ramli]

Yeah because the d stands for daemon

[@arnaudparan1419]

hmm docker images contain more than just the files, there are informations about volumes, environment variables, etc How do you deal with that metadata? You parse it and translate it?

[@username7763]

Sounds like a great approach. When hosting different customers software, you need stronger isolation than docker. I have to wonder what's the point of the docker image in the mix though? Might as well standardize on a zip file with a consistent startup script name. Is there any benefit to the dockerfile and image?

[@ZeroCTRLX]

great job, however, i fail to understand what the actual benefits are over existing solutions?

[@ElmerGLue]

It isn’t a new solution, it is used within AWS for their cloud services.

[@robertotomas]

Definitely can’t wait for the next one ❤

[@MrDinivini]

We went full circle, chaps. VM -> containers -> Micro VMs.

[@frazuppi4897]

love your energy! sending love from switzerland

[@LokendraSingh-42]

2:11 Because we are fancy😂

[@finally_code]

Really interesting! Great job explaining this.

[@amiralirobatjazy7274]

Tnx for your great content please make a video about anycast

[@runescapes]

Annie is awesome, great video

[@user-up8fm3vb1r]

This was very interesting... using a vm to run oci images... I might use that for any of the projects I will make

[@chantastic]

great video! killer intro. love it. moar pls.

[@flydotio]

Thanks Michael!!!

[@lNLl]

Ok, it was cool. Subscribed for more videos 😂

[@frzen]

Thanks I would be interested in the networking video maybe a little bit more in depth

[@akashkarnatak6581]

Wow this was informative. Need more videos 😁

[@oskar1504]

Nice good to know. Did you planned you system around this approach or did you used docker in the beginning and wanted to find a better way. If so are they any statistics created which show the gain of perfomance by using those firecracker micro vms?

[@petenilson]

We want more!

[@jaimalad2902]

Please make video explaining anycast

[@rvrmarco]

1972: guys I can run a computer inside a computer, I called that a virtual machine 1995: guys I created a language that will take a process and run in isolation, I think I'll call this a virtual machine and you can run it inside an actual virtual machine 2010: guys running VMs is too heavy, but we can run stuff in containers, cgroups will ensure isolation on shared computational resources 2024: guys, why don't we run each container inside its own VM, this way they won't need to compete for resources and each VM will even be geographically isolated 2050: I want to run this quantistic simulation of the universe on an isolated universe

[@username7763]

Funny thing is, the Windows world was ahead of Linux. Windows XP / 2003 added Job objects which is the equivalent to cgroups. Only thing Windows had to add was namespace isolation. And namespace isolation is the part of Docker I don't like, processes should be able to communicate over more than sockets.

[@rvrmarco]

@@username7763 It is sometimes annoying and I'm too ignorant to know for sure why both systems where designed that way. My guess is that this was done to prevent privilege escalation attacks from within a container

[@saumyashhah]

Like the explanation, curious how this is different than Proxmox LXCs?

[@74357175]

Can this approach be used to convert Docker images to other containers,like LXC? Is there any yool that will do this filesystem unpacking?

[@BrianThomas]

Wow, good-looking and smart. You have my attention

[@anfytrion]

Needed this video

[@rackbites]

Superstar!

[@redwingbeast1396]

damn!! will check documentation today.

[@RobertoLiberadoFlores]

Cool, more like this please.

[@mitaskeledzija6269]

How would you combat volume mounting on another container in Docker? Because it's hell

[@duncanedwards8258]

Great vid! Make more!

[@noomondai]

Very good!

[@Matusevichfilms]

anycast yesss

[@capability-snob]

That's a great architecture

[@eckhardt092]

Great video

[@classicrockonly]

I need to see if I can deconstruct this Docker stuff and try this on top of SmartOS Linux bhyve images

[@covle9180]

I will never pronounce it like that, thank you very much

[@hakuna_matata_hakuna]

how comes its sohard to rsync if it's an actual vm?

[@nixonnelson5181]

can you compare it to lxd

[@Ro_dolfoSilva]

Please, I need to know more!!! 🧠🧠🔥🔥

[@Yusuf-ok5rk]

i love the video. this video is 4 minutes and it is okay but for longer videos can you make it like Y Combinator (their youtube) style right side panel topic progression thingy? so we can watch/listen to while a bit idle. better for multitasking and such.

[@flydotio]

Thats a cool suggestion, we'll keep that in mind!

[@mitaskeledzija6269]

Why SHA256 tho? Is it safe?

[@arpitbharti6245]

really cool

[@shivangtripathi2369]

Interesting 😮

[@noabstruction]

Communication 101.

[@tanishqsingla9492]

I'm a bit confused, why do you have docker in the picture when you have your own registry. You can just build your own image builder at this point

[@flydotio]

It wouldn’t benefit us to have a custom image builder when Docker does that part well, no need to reinvent that wheel. Our registry is still a Docker registry, just one we control. The blog post explains this in more detail if you wanna learn more.

[@declanmcardle]

Amsterdammer speaking English there at the end...

[@minma02262]

Commenting "comment below"

[@Voltra_]

Docker without docker is literally the dream for people who like me hate working with docker

[@flydotio]

Something else you may want to check out: Podman podman.io/ Podman is CLI-compatible with Docker and runs Docker images without Docker using the latest and greatest in Linux user-level namespace technology. I personally use Podman desktop when/where I can, but I have a few usecases that need me to use real Docker (mostly for uploading AI images with Replicate's Cog).

[@username7763]

@@flydotio Yeah podman fixes quite a few problems with docker.

[@cheebadigga4092]

container images*

[@EduardoCruzFreelancer]

Who is she? I wanna subscribe to whatever she talks about daily!

[@comicalInsan]

can you have Thomas on the show?

[@flydotio]

I can try to coerce him

[@amir-ziaei]

Please listen to Kent

[@ivorjawa]

ContaiNERD

[@373323]

so, why not just do VMs , and we ship the app pre-installed on them ... or just install them like we used to do in the good old days

[@toor30309]

lol hilarious

[@rachitkawar4419]

Please Make more videos

[@flydotio]

Only cuz you said so!