While ARDI runs very well on virtual machines, there isn’t currently a container-based version of ARDI available.
This is for several reasons:
-
- Docker containers are designed to run one service at a time. ARDI requires an absolute minimum of three, but dynamically changes to have many more as you install additional drivers to the system.
- Docker containers expect to have a pre-defined set of network ports. ARDI servers add additional, dynamic ports for new contexts or sites,
- Docker containers don’t allow for easy installation of additional packages, where ARDI servers are expected to be upgraded with additional libraries, addons and modules to extend the product.
We’ve set up ARDI to be very easy to install on Linux virtual machines. It is significantly more work to set up a Dockerised ARDI server than it is to set up a VM.
Because of this, Optrix advise against installing ARDI servers in container environments unless you are packaging a complete, fixed application. While the dynamic nature of an ARDI server doesn’t suit containers, if you have a fixed application where there aren’t any expected changes, you can build a container around that.
However, we continue to look into options – should a suitable mainstream container format arise that supports multiple services in a single container, we will certainly look into options around it.