Google launches Docker container registry service for cloud customers

Google has added a private container registry service on its cloud platform that will allow customers to secure their Docker-based projects. The Google Container Registry service, which is still a beta offering, aims to offer a higher level of security for containers. “Docker has emerged as a popular technology for application containerization, revolutionizing how applications are built, deployed and managed. Google Cloud Platform offers rich support for Docker containers through the fully managed Google Container Engine service powered by Kubernetes, container optimized VMs on Google Compute Engine, and Managed VMs for Google App Engine,” Google said in a blog post . [caption id=“attachment_1847255” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Google in the dock. Reuters[/caption] According to the search engine giant, the new registry service offers access control to Google cloud customers. The service hosts users’ private images in Google Cloud Storage under their Google Cloud Platform project. “This ensures by default that your private images can only be accessed by members of your project, enabling them to securely push and pull images through the Google Cloud SDK command line. Container host VMs can then access secured images without additional effort,” Pratul Dublish, technical program manager at Google, said in the blog post. A private registry gives far more control over images and there’s a less chance for man-in-the-middle attacks or other means of getting to the images in a date centre. The service also offers server-side encryption, which means users’ private images will automatically get encrypted before they are written to disk. “Private images are stored in Google Cloud Storage and cached in our datacentres, ready to be deployed to Google Container Engine clusters or Google Compute Engine container optimized VMs over Google Cloud Platform’s Andromeda based network fabric,” Dublish added. During the Container Registry beta, there is no extra cost for using the registry service besides the Google Cloud Storage charges for storage and network resources consumed by users’ private images. Customers must also have Docker installed, along with the Google Cloud SDK.