What is the difference that we are making by using Docker for Mendix?

Question

In usual cases for local apps, we deploy it to mendix public cloud but if we isolate the mendix runtime and deploy it with a docker container, what difference does it make. what are the benefits with docker?

Answer 1

Deploying on the cloud is easy and fast especially if you want to host your app and check it from everywhere, while deploying on docker could be helpful if you want to deploy on a private machine. You can also check performances and monitor better the container.

Answer 2

It really depends on what you are trying to achieve with Mendix. If you want to use Mendix to build applications quickly I would always suggest using the Mendix Public Cloud.

If you run a larger stack, something based on Kubernetes, and Mendix is a single application in that stack, using Docker is really great. This way when you deploy multiple different applications and see how they work together. Your application might use an integration with Kafka/Reddis, or have smaller serverlets. Using docker you can deploy everything at once and do testing locally.

Answer 3

No benefits because you loose scalability.

Platforms like Mendix can shine if you scale them (have hundreds of Apps). The Whole Build, Deployment, Monitoring and Operations of the App costs you Pennies.

If you start building your own Docker Images you will start to soon hit the same Problems as with any other App. You will need an Orchestrator (Kubernetes?) and an Operator (Kubernetes?) or else Manual Scripting effort will start killing your gains