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Docker

Docker is an open source tool you can use to run containers and define container images as code. A container is a bit like a lightweight VM, except instead of virtualizing all the hardware and the entire operating system, containers virtualize solely user space, which gives you many of the isolation benefits of a VM (each container is isolated in terms of memory, CPU, networking, hard drive, etc), but with much less memory, CPU, and start-up time overhead. For example, here is how you can define an Ubuntu 18.04 Docker image that has Node.js installed:

Dockerfile
FROM ubuntu:18.04

RUN curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash - && \
    sudo apt-get update -y && \
    sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

You can run docker build -t example-image . to build a Docker image from this code, push the image to a Docker Registry (e.g., ECR or Docker Hub), and then deploy the Docker image using other tools. For example, the Gruntwork Infrastructure as Code Library contains a number of modules for running container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes, ECS, and Nomad that you can use to deploy and manage Docker images.