Docker basics
Containers, an increasingly popular technology for deploying and running software on Linux, can run on IBM LinuxONE™ and IBM Z®.
With containers, you can run multiple encapsulated workloads on a single Linux instance. Docker is a leading software container platform. Docker uses copy-on-write and overlay file system technology, to efficiently deploy and run workloads in containers. For isolation it uses Linux resource scoping mechanisms.
On an IBM® mainframe, Linux instances with Docker containers can run in LPAR mode or as a guest of z/VM® or KVM. The Docker CLI and REST API are identical across hardware systems, including the mainframe.
Docker itself does not depend on a particular mainframe level, but it has requirements on Linux. The Linux instance must be compiled to include all modules and functions that are used by Docker. Recent versions of all distributions for IBM mainframes can run Docker.
The sections that follow provide a brief introduction to Docker as applicable to Linux on Z and LinuxONE. For details and a more general view, go to www.docker.com.