Item: Portainer
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have recently began transitioning from using many virtual machines each running specific services to a containerized system. Portainer has eased this transition to docker and gives us a well designed and easy to use management interface with great user permissions. This has greatly cut down on our compute requirements allowing downsizing cloud providers, which in turn has saved money and time.

Pros and Cons

Allows administering container updates with a few clicks.
Stacks help ensure correct container configuration in an easy to read format compared to the docker command line
Allows many users each with different permission levels based on what is needed

Having an option to select a default environment to connect to would be useful for single environment deployments
The option of using SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt in addition to uploading your own
Environments public IP being self discovered instead of defaulting to 0.0.0.0

Return on Investment

Reduced time managing containers significantly which allows time to be spent on other projects
Lowered cloud compute bill as we were able to reduce number of virtual machines needed.
Allows more control over what permissions each team member gets in our docker environments.

Alternatives Considered

SUSE Rancher

Initially looked into using Rancher for container management but it is
aimed more at kubernetes deployments. I have used both at home and liked
Portainer more, especially since we are using docker standalone. From
my limited experience with Rancher, Portainer seems to work much better
with docker and has been a great experience so far.

Key Insights

Do you think Portainer delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Portainer's feature set?

Yes

Did Portainer live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Portainer go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Portainer again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Docker, Proxmox VE

Likelihood to Recommend

Has made transitioning from virtual machines extremely quick and easy using stacks. Administering updates to individual containers is a smooth experience without needing the docker command line. Has significantly reduced the number of operating systems needed so we spend less time managing server infrastructure and allowing us to focus more time on other projects.

Signifigantly reduced time managing containers

Overall Satisfaction with Portainer