Case Study: IBM achieves scalable Docker container deployment on OpenPOWER with Cloud Foundry

IBM runs up to 10,000 containers on OpenPOWER with Cloud Foundry

IBM required a solution to run Docker containers at a large scale on its OpenPOWER system architecture. The challenge was to adapt the Cloud Foundry platform, specifically the Diego release, to function effectively on this alternative processor architecture, which required OpenPOWER-specific components.

Cloud Foundry provided the solution by creating and deploying a suite of OpenPOWER-specific BOSH releases, including Diego, etcd, and garden-linux. This enabled IBM to successfully deploy a Cloud Foundry environment on OpenStack on OpenPOWER. As a result, IBM was able to run a web server application inside a Docker container on the platform, demonstrating the capability to manage containerized workloads with better price performance, a feat previously demonstrated by running up to 10,000 containers on a single IBM POWER system.

IBM