A container is a standalone, lightweight and executable package that is a piece of software; it includes everything required to run it such as runtime, code, system libraries, and system tools.
It is available for Linux and Windows-based applications, and is containerized software that will always run the same way, in any of the environments. It will isolate the software from the surroundings.
Containers and virtual machines have the same benefits for resource isolation and allocation; both function differently, as Containers virtualize the operating system and not the hardware. Containers are more efficient and portable, compared to virtual machines.
In the next section, we will look at the Amazon EC2 Container Service.
