Containers vs Virtual Machines
When Should You Use Containers?
Containers might be the right choice if you’re looking to cater to your short-term application needs. Since containers are portable and can be set up and started up quickly, they can help elastically scale your applications to align with demand. Examples include event-driven video streaming, web service delivery, insurance claims or online order fulfillment.You should opt for containerization when your priority is to maximize the number of applications you’re running on a minimal number of servers. However, containers have the limitation of not being supported by dedicated storage resources and processing and operating systems.Containers are well-suited for packaging micro services and building cloud-native apps.
When Should You Use Virtual Machines?
VMs are the best option for businesses that need to run multiple applications that require the comprehensive functionality and support of a dedicated OS.VMs are best suited for applications that you need to use for extended time periods and run within a virtualized environment that is more versatile and secure.
Virtualization is better suited for housing traditional, legacy, monolithic workloads, provisioning infrastructural resources, running one OS inside another and isolating risky development cycles.