Using Docker to containerize an application is an efficient and secure way to make your configurations portable as well as scaleable. If you are not familiar with what Docker is or how it can used to encapsulate your application infrastructure, see the online reference, What is a Container? on the Docker.com site.
Unlike virtualization where a host operating system runs multiple copies of an entire guest operating system, containers run as self-contained and isolated applications on the host OS itself. Multiple instances of the application can be spun up and shut down using the minimum of system resources.
With the latest release of the OAS Platform, we now fully support the deployment of an OAS server within a Docker container on both Windows and Linux platforms with the ability to centrally manage container licenses either directly on the host or remotely from a client PC. Each instance of the OAS Platform in a container is the full OAS runtime with all product features available, which can be used to independently move data from PLCs or other IoT devices, databases, and applications to any destination.
The OAS Platform in each container also supports full programmatic configuration and visualization APIs (both Windows and Web UIs as well as REST API support), so custom applications can target one or more container instances. And container instances can be networked together with Live Data Cloud for data aggregation or even failover.
With this new release, OAS extends its ability to be the ideal IoT solution for industrial automation, IoT Edge solutions, and IoT Gateway implementations. See our article on Getting Started with OAS in Docker for more technical information and instructions on how to configure your Docker installation.