Azure Container Service is out of preview and ready for prime time, Microsoft announced Tuesday. The service gives businesses a simple way to run their containerized applications in the cloud; it’s been available in preview since the end of last year.
Microsoft is offering Azure Container Service with a choice of two orchestration systems: Docker Swarm and Mesosphere’s Data Center Operating System, or DC/OS.
Microsoft also announced it is collaborating with Mesosphere and a number of other technology companies on an open-source version of DC/OS. DC/OS is powered by Apache Mesos technology, which major players like Twitter and Yelp already use to build and run distributed systems and applications. It can be operated from the web or command line, and includes an “app-store-like” environment for selecting and adding new components, according to a Microsoft blog post announcing the project.
Enterprises have moved quickly to adopt containers over the past couple of years, with Docker the leading vehicle for managing them. Containers allow for running multiple local development environments from the same host across different software and operating systems. Developers can more easily test and deploy projects uniformly, without using space-guzzling virtual machines.