The Central Point of Container-Based Development: Google Cloud Container Registry
As software development processes transformed from monolithic structures to one where containers that could be defined as building blocks working independently of each other were used, it brought technologies to support this infrastructure. As Google’s first cloud solution partner in Turkey, Global IT, in this article we focus on the concept of Container Registry, which plays an important role in a successful container management strategy.
The internet, which was once only an experiment that connected university networks, is an indispensable part of our lives today. Even when the Internet was made accessible to end users, what we could do was quite limited.
But it didn’t take long for the potential of the internet to be realized, and today we use the internet and the applications developed on this base in many areas, from shopping to payment, from access to information to entertainment. So much so that thanks to the concept of the Internet of Things, which defines internet-connected devices that can communicate with each other, we need applications consisting of thousands of lines of code in many solutions from warehouse management to smart homes. This complexity brings with it new technical approaches and applications.
We develop our applications with an architecture we call containers so that the systems work flawlessly, single points of failure are eliminated, and they can respond to heavy user traffic. We also use different technologies to run containers, the details of which we have mentioned in our article and which we can define as the singular building blocks of an internet-based application. As Global IT, Google’s first cloud solution partner in Turkey, we focus on Google Cloud Container Registry in this article.
How do containers work?
Before moving on to Container Registry technology and solutions such as Google Cloud Container Registry, which offers this technology, let’s briefly recall how containers work. Containers are building blocks containing executable code that enable running an isolated process in a computing environment.
As a transformation point in application development, container technology serves as a backdrop for making software processes and microservices executable in any computing environment. In this respect, it is similar to the containers we are used to seeing in ports. Containers are capable of running on any cloud infrastructure where they are deployed, as they do not depend on any operating system. These building blocks, each positioned as autonomous structures with interoperability, are used today to develop agile, highly efficient and future-oriented solutions.
What is a Container Registry?
Container ledgers are storage locations for pushing and pulling container images. Container registry plays an important role in a successful container management strategy, making it easy for developers to store, manage, and deploy container images.
Container registry integrates seamlessly into continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) workflows, providing reliable, consistent, and efficient access to container images and a host of other built-in features. Registries are known as the actual physical locations where container images are stored. Each container image in these warehouses represents a different version of the same container deployment. For example, in Docker Hub, one of the popular container registries, nginx corresponds to the name of the physical location that contains the different versions of the Docker image for the open-source web server setup NGNIX.
When you monitor container development management, you need a place to save, share, and access these containers as they are created. This is where container registries come into play. In addition to this capability, the registries also store application programming interface (API) paths and access control parameters for communication between two containers.
What are the types of container registries?
There are two types of container ledgers in which container entries are made. Public ledgers are used by small teams and individuals who want to start recordings as quickly as possible.
But as businesses grow, more complex needs like privacy and access control emerge. Custom registry solutions play a role here. Private registries offer a way to incorporate security and privacy into remote or self-hosted enterprise container image storage. These registries often come with advanced security features and technical support, including Google Container Registry, AWS Amazon Elastic Container Registry, and Microsoft Azure Container Registry.
What is Google Container Registry? What are its features?
Google Cloud Container Registry is a collaborative workspace where development teams manage container images built with Docker, perform vulnerability analysis, and decide who has access to what with granular access control options. The features and benefits of Google Cloud Container Registry include:
● Secure, private Docker registry: Google Container Registry gives you minutes to access secure private Docker image storage in Google Cloud Platform. Who can access, view or download container images can be controlled via the registry.
● Automatically create and deploy: Google Container Registry users can automatically create containers of code they add to Cloud Source Repositories, GitHub or Bitbucket and import them into their own Google registry. These containers can be deployed directly from Google Kubernetes Engine, App Engine, Cloud Functions, or Firebase with the capabilities of Google Cloud.
● In-depth vulnerability scanning: By making it easy to identify vulnerabilities early in the software deployment cycle, Google Container Registry helps ensure that the process of deploying container images is secure. The threat database provided by Google is constantly updated, so that in-depth scans are kept up to date with new malware.
● Ability to lock risky images: Google Container Registry, which comes with Binary Authorization, is used to define policies and prevent the distribution of images that conflict with the specified policies. Risky images that don’t follow policies can be automatically locked so that they are not distributed via Google Kubernetes Engine.
● Native Docker support: Google Container Registry also provides the functionality to push and pull Docker images to the registry using the standard Docker command-line interface. In this respect, Google Container Registry works fully compatible with Docker.
● Fast, highly available access: Offering a widespread network of data centers worldwide, Google offers the ability to choose the most convenient locations for Container Registry users. Thus, businesses can achieve the fastest response times. Ledgers can be located in data centers in Europe, Asia, and the US, giving you access to Google’s high-performance global network.
What should be considered when choosing a Container Registry solution?
We mentioned that there are multiple service providers that offer Container Registry technology, which is a must-have solution for businesses that adopt a microarchitectural approach and develop container-based applications. When choosing a container registry solution, businesses can pay attention to:
● Ability to perform scans based on a regularly updated vulnerability database: Malware targeting containers threatens overall business processes. Solutions that enable security scanning of the entire registry using a regularly updated vulnerability database, including new threats, are important to protect critical processes.
● Strong integration with CI/CD tools and processes: Container infrastructure is based on developer teams being able to execute agile development processes by adopting the principles of continuous integration and continuous deployment. Container Registry solutions must also support this.
● Deployment flexibility: Before choosing a Container Registry solution, businesses should also investigate how flexibly they can use the relevant registry on-prem, private, public clouds or multi-cloud environment. What to look for here is that the solution in question can scale and adapt to situations where the architecture evolves.
Introducing Google Container Registry through Global IT
Global IT, which is one of the first brands that come to mind when it comes to Google Cloud in Turkey and carries the title of being the oldest and only Cloud Premier business partner of Google with 16 years of experience, is also the provider of Google Cloud Container Registry solution, which offers everything expected from a Container Registry solution.
Global IT, which supports businesses that want to carry out cloud migration and cloud optimization processes, especially the modernization of e-commerce, to move all their digital infrastructure to microarchitectural services and improve them with Google Cloud facilities, offers the most appropriate roadmap for the use of Google Cloud Container Registry.
If you want Global IT, which has managed to introduce more than 700 companies and nearly 90 thousand users to the advantages of the cloud so far, and delivered Google solutions to Turkey’s leading brands with more than 3,300 projects, to contact you, you can fill out the contact form at the bottom of this article.