Docker Engine overview

Docker Engine is an open source containerization technology for building and containerizing your applications. Docker Engine acts as a client-server application with:

  • A server with a long-running daemon process dockerd.
  • APIs which specify interfaces that programs can use to talk to and instruct the Docker daemon.
  • A command line interface (CLI) client docker.

The CLI uses Docker APIs to control or interact with the Docker daemon through scripting or direct CLI commands. Many other Docker applications use the underlying API and CLI. The daemon creates and manage Docker objects, such as images, containers, networks, and volumes.

For more details, see Docker Architecture.

Licensing

The Docker Engine is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSEopen_in_new for the full license text.