Overview of Docker Editions

In this post, we would like to discuss on the different flavours currently available in docker.io site. When you start exploring things at the top level to design the infrastructure for a project that has microservice architecture and needs to be scaled in future, this would give some insights to make a decision on what to choose why.

docker editions in details

Docker is available in two editions:

• Community Edition (CE)
• Enterprise Edition (EE)

Docker Community Edition (CE) is ideal for individual developers and small teams looking to get started with Docker and experimenting with container-based apps.

Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) is designed for enterprise development and IT teams who build, ship and run business-critical applications in production at scale.

About Docker Community Edition (CE):

Docker Community Edition (CE) is ideal for developers and small teams looking to get started with Docker and experimenting with container-based apps. Docker CE has three types of update channels, stable, test, and nightly:

• Stable gives you the latest releases for general availability.
• Test gives pre-releases that are ready for testing before general availability.
• Nightly gives you latest builds of work in progress for the next major release.

Support

Docker CE releases of a year-month branch are supported with patches as needed for 7 months after the first year-month 

About Docker EE

Docker Enterprise Edition (Docker EE) is designed for enterprise development and IT teams who build, ship, and run business-critical applications in production and at scale. Docker EE is integrated, certified, and supported to provide enterprises with the most secure container platform in the industry. For more info about Docker EE.

There are currently two versions of Docker EE Engine available:

• 18.03 - Use this version if you’re only running Docker EE Engine.
• 17.06 - Use this version if you’re using Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 (Docker Engine, UCP, and DTR).

In Enterprise edition we have three additional editions available:

1.Enterprise Edition Basic

2.Enterprise Edition Standard

3.Enterprise Edition Advanced

EE Basic:

With Docker EE Basic, you can deploy Docker Enterprise Engine to manage your container workloads in a flexible way. You can manage workloads on Windows, Linux, on-premise or on the cloud.

Docker EE Basic has enterprise-class support with defined SLAs, extended maintenance cycles for patches for up to 24 months.

EE Standard:

Docker EE Standard has everything the Basic edition has, and extends it with private image management, integrated image signing policies, and cluster management with support for Kubernetes and Swarm orchestrators.

EE Advanced:

Docker EE Advanced takes this one step further and allows you to implement node-based RBAC policies, image promotion policies, image mirroring, and scan your images for vulnerabilities.

Support :

Each Docker EE release is supported and maintained for 24 months, and receives security and critical bug fixes during this period.

Docker Certified Cloud Infrastructure

This is a critical section where you do the options to choose according to the facilities : 

• Infrastructure based cloud supported :
• VMware
• AWS 
• Microsoft Azure 
• IBM cloud (coming soon)
• Software as a service
• Oracle Cloud industry 

Reference docs : https://docs.docker.com/ee/supported-platforms/#supported-platforms