Virtuozzo, powering more than five million virtual environments as the leading virtualization platform for service providers, announced the availability of Virtuozzo Storage for Docker. Delivering persistent storage capabilities for Docker production deployments, Virtuozzo Storage for Docker offers Docker volumes integration as the default stateful data storage mechanism on servers used by Docker applications in multi-server environments. Virtuozzo Storage for Docker is available for Insider Access as part of DockerCon.

"Docker containers deliver their core benefit of reusability and portability precisely because they are stateless, and persistent data is clearly separated. While in development, Docker native storage capabilities are usually sufficient. Once, however, a Docker application goes into production, you need a more robust solution to manage and protect such data - it is not just about test records anymore" said Rob Lovell, CEO of Virtuozzo. "A major management problem arises in highly dynamic multi-server environments-it becomes nearly impossible to efficiently manage application data using Docker alone. Virtuozzo Storage for Docker solves that problem."

Instead of relying on external storage or risking data loss, when developers need stateful storage for their Docker containers and container-based applications they can use Virtuozzo Storage for Docker driver, a software-defined storage solution that can leverage the same hardware already used for Docker deployments. In addition, Virtuozzo Storage for Docker scales for even the most demanding production applications, by delivering up to hundreds of nodes with petabytes of storage capacity - ensuring that storage capacity or performance is never a bottleneck when scaling out Docker production deployments.

"Docker is fantastic for building and testing, but doesn't include a good storage solution for production environments," said Lovell. "Virtuozzo Storage for Docker was designed specifically for containers, providing a persistent storage solution for anyone running Docker in a production environment."

Among the other advantages delivered by Virtuozzo Storage for Docker are:

• High availability. In the event of hardware failure, Virtuozzo Storage switches to redundant data copies and restores data in a matter of minutes-all automatically.
• Cluster friendly. Docker Swarm integration converts Docker Swarm nodes to software-defined storage nodes.
• High performance. Automatic load balancing, SSD caching, and other optimizations deliver performance improvements often an order of magnitude higher than other storage solutions.
• Better data protection. Data check summing, verification, and other measures ensure data is readable and accurate.
• Economical. Works on commodity hardware, utilizes idle drive capacity, hot-pluggable when new nodes or devices need to be added.

"Virtuozzo Storage for Docker works seamlessly with Docker containers and addresses the need for persistent storage," said Philbert Shih, managing director, Structure Research. "This is a problem that end users and service providers alike are trying to solve and Virtuozzo now makes it possible for Docker to support applications running in even the most demanding multi-server production environments."

"We are big fans of Virtuozzo Storage and are currently using it to give our customers a highly available, secure storage solution," said Camiel Cornelissen, senior product manager, Hostnet. "The new driver in Virtuozzo Storage for Docker provides even more opportunities for partners like us to reach new target customers with a customized, persistent Docker storage solution."