Pt. 3: PC Containers – What are they good for?
Q& A: Enabling The Chaos
Part one | Part two | Part three
Q:: Windows images are multi-gigabytes in size – how do I distribute them to users all over the world, often with poor network connections?
A:: Moka5’s container infrastructure is designed for global image deployment and update. Our images are stored on a ‘Primary Image Store’ … the acronym for which is a favorite of mine to write on the white board. This is a component that has been optimized to ensure that when an end user copies a container to their machine it happens in a timely - but not network impacting - way. But surely if the user is in Asia and this image store is in the US the latency will kill us! Yup – that’s right. That’s why we created Replica Image Stores. Replica Image Stores can be placed at your company’s sites in a specific region … or be placed in Amazon S3 to serve a particular geography. Oh … whilst we are on the topic of Amazon, the whole of Moka5’s infrastructure is certified for deployment at Amazon … so if you don’t want infrastructure in house we have an option for that too.
Q:: But what about deployment in remote / poor network areas?
A:: There are always situations where even a replica won’t help. For example, where there is such poor connectivity, that downloading a pc container and full corporate workspace will just not be feasible. For that Moka5 has developed seamless deployment from a USB. The admin performs ‘USB bulk provisioning’ … which puts the installer and the container onto the USB stick. When the installer runs it sees the local container and copies it from the stick. This is important as it’s a smooth process for the user – we all know that “if a user CAN get it wrong they WILL get it wrong” so this wraps the provisioning process all within a lovely little installer – even my Mum could do it!
Q:: Not just BYO Mac or windows machines? How do I use Windows containers for my corporate estate as well as BYOPC?
A:: So I like the look of the security and management of containers … but I don’t want to manage an image on the host AND in the guest. How do I approach my corporate real estate? That’s Moka5 BareMetal. BareMetal is our own Operating System that installs directly onto corporate hardware. It exists for one reason and one reason only – it runs containers. It’s a closed system – the user can do nothing native – just launch the container and the authorized workspace(s) inside.. This means that you have a super secure and M5 managed OS, so you just need to worry about the containers. Oh, and the containers it run - they are exactly the same pc container that you have been putting together and managing for your BYO estate! EASY PEASY!!!
Q:: And what about beyond Windows??
A:: Yes, we do that too. Today enterprises still use Windows workspaces for content creation – running on Windows or Macs. But increasingly they want content consumption on iOS and Android devices. Moka5 has a content consumption pc container for those platforms also. It uses the same great infrastructure to manage containers on phones and tablet devices. And as for the future – as we see a move to private and public cloud based services that no longer require Windows but a secure browser … we’re thinking on that too. Our plans for a ‘native container’ are well underway … but I can’t say more here or they’ll kill me. Just watch this space!
Part one | Part two | Part three
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