A Paradigm Shift in Code Deployment

Containers

Would you believe that two-thirds of enterprise companies have already invested in containers? Lightweight and fast, containers help support the growing movement towards microservices.

We believe containers are the paradigm for modern architectures — and they’re a great fit for using MarkLogic. Developers already get significant agility with MarkLogic, which provides a fast and iterative way to integrate, store, manage, and search data. By combining MarkLogic and containers, developers can release code even faster.

MarkLogic supports containers so you can deploy with greater ease and speed. If, for instance, you use MarkLogic + Docker to pack, ship, and run applications within containers, developers simply write an application, place it in a container, and deploy.

What Are Containers?

Containers are a popular solution to run software reliably as it’s moved from one environment to another. Not only do containers package up applications, but also reduce costs through sharing computing resources.

Virtual Machines vs. Containers

Deploying MarkLogic in virtual machines (VMs) enables true network separation: VMs have a full operating system (OS) with its own memory management installed, and resources are shared for the guest OS and hypervisor. This makes it possible to run many instances of one or more operating systems, in parallel, on a single machine or host.

In comparison, you can run simultaneous containers on a single OS without needing a resource-heavy hypervisor. You can run more containers on a given hardware combination than if you were using virtual machines. This makes containers a lightweight, shared-resource, cost-effective alternative to VMs.

VMs should be used if you need to run multiple applications on multiple servers, but containers are a good alternative if you need to run many copies of a single application.

Deploying MarkLogic on Containers

Containers can run on top of virtual machines or bare metal infrastructure. And because MarkLogic is cloud-neutral and platform-agnostic, running MarkLogic in containers offers you increased flexibility: You can easily write an application once, and deploy it anywhere in the cloud or on-premise.

Key Benefits

Portable

Easily deploy applications built on MarkLogic while maintaining security at the application layer across all deployed apps.

Lightweight

Create and run MarkLogic on containers in seconds, and spin up additional query capacity for varying needs in near real time.

Fast

Enable rapid software development and smooth CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) with consistency.

Develop in Containers

We’ve done the work to make sure you can deploy containers safely in development. We’ve done extensive regression and performance testing to compare MarkLogic in containers with MarkLogic on virtual machines, and the resulting performance is similar. In addition, containers in production are more viable than ever through continuous advancements in the container ecosystem.

Approaches to Deploying MarkLogic

Set Up MarkLogic Docker Containers in 3 Easy Steps

Make a MarkLogic container image on your local machine, save it, and fire it up! We weren’t kidding when we said it was easy.

3 steps to set up marklogic docker containers

Share and Deploy via Registry

After creating the MarkLogic container image, push it to a private registry. Anyone in your organization with access can pull the container image from the private registry.

steps to deploy via registry

MarkLogic Now Available on Docker Hub

MarkLogic is available at Docker Hub, the world’s largest library and community for containers, to make it easier than ever to deploy MarkLogic in containers. It is fully supported by MarkLogic and with automated builds, you can be sure to have the latest updates. As with everything MarkLogic, it’s designed to keep all your data secure while simplifying data integration for you to quickly build apps.

Visit Docker Hub for our publicly available MarkLogic container image.

MarkLogic in Docker and Kubernetes

Learn More About Containers with These Technical Blogs

Building a MarkLogic Docker Container

Learn how to create a MarkLogic Docker container and build a MarkLogic image with detailed steps and examples.

Automating MarkLogic Docker Installs

With only one docker-compose command, have a 3-node (or more) MarkLogic cluster created and ready to use with no manual intervention.

MarkLogic Docker Container on Windows

Find out how to reduce the ramp up time for using a MarkLogic Docker container on windows.

Creating an MLCP Docker Container with Pre‑loaded Data

Create a Docker image with a known dataset and then use the image to deploy that data to a MarkLogic instance using the container’s MLCP library.