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Docker vs NGINX Unit: What are the differences?
Docker: Enterprise Container Platform for High-Velocity Innovation. The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere; NGINX Unit: A dynamic web and application server with Go, PHP, Python, Perl, and Ruby support. NGINX Unit is a dynamic web application server, designed to run applications in multiple languages. Unit is lightweight, polyglot, and dynamically configured via API. The design of the server allows reconfiguration of specific application parameters as needed by the engineering or operations.
Docker can be classified as a tool in the "Virtual Machine Platforms & Containers" category, while NGINX Unit is grouped under "Web Servers".
Some of the features offered by Docker are:
- Integrated developer tools
- open, portable images
- shareable, reusable apps
On the other hand, NGINX Unit provides the following key features:
- Fully dynamic reconfiguration using RESTful JSON API
- Multiple application languages and versions can run simultaneously
- Dynamic application processes management (coming soon)
Docker and NGINX Unit are both open source tools. It seems that Docker with 54K GitHub stars and 15.6K forks on GitHub has more adoption than NGINX Unit with 1.98K GitHub stars and 141 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Docker has a broader approval, being mentioned in 3527 company stacks & 3449 developers stacks; compared to NGINX Unit, which is listed in 11 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.
lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.
Pros of Docker
- Rapid integration and build up823
- Isolation689
- Open source519
- Testability and reproducibility505
- Lightweight459
- Standardization217
- Scalable184
- Upgrading / downgrading / application versions105
- Security87
- Private paas environments84
- Portability33
- Limit resource usage25
- Game changer16
- I love the way docker has changed virtualization15
- Fast13
- Concurrency11
- Docker's Compose tools7
- Easy setup5
- Fast and Portable5
- Because its fun4
- Makes shipping to production very simple3
- It's dope2
- Highly useful2
- Very easy to setup integrate and build1
- Package the environment with the application1
- Does a nice job hogging memory1
- Open source and highly configurable1
- Simplicity, isolation, resource effective1
- MacOS support FAKE1
- Its cool1
- Docker hub for the FTW1
- HIgh Throughput1
Pros of NGINX Unit
- PHP3
- Python2
- Golang2
- Multilang2
- Node.js1
- Ruby1
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Cons of Docker
- New versions == broken features8
- Unreliable networking6
- Documentation not always in sync6
- Moves quickly4
- Not Secure3
Cons of NGINX Unit
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What is Docker?
What is NGINX Unit?
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