Overview

Welcome! We’re excited that you want to learn Docker.

This guide contains step-by-step instructions on how to get started with Docker. Some of the things you’ll learn and do in this guide are:

  • Build and run an image as a container.
  • Share images using Docker Hub.
  • Deploy Docker applications using multiple containers with a database.
  • Run applications using Docker Compose.

Before you get to the hands on part of the guide, you should learn about containers and images.

What is a container?

Simply put, a container is a sandboxed process on your machine that is isolated from all other processes on the host machine. That isolation leverages kernel namespaces and cgroups, features that have been in Linux for a long time. Docker has worked to make these capabilities approachable and easy to use. To summarize, a container:

  • Is a runnable instance of an image. You can create, start, stop, move, or delete a container using the DockerAPI or CLI.
  • Can be run on local machines, virtual machines or deployed to the cloud.
  • Is portable (can be run on any OS).
  • Is isolated from other containers and runs its own software, binaries, and configurations.

What is a container image?

When running a container, it uses an isolated filesystem. This custom filesystem is provided by a container image. Since the image contains the container’s filesystem, it must contain everything needed to run an application - all dependencies, configurations, scripts, binaries, etc. The image also contains other configuration for the container, such as environment variables, a default command to run, and other metadata.

You’ll dive deeper into images later on in this guide, covering topics such as layering, best practices, and more.

Note

If you’re familiar with chroot, think of a container as an extended version of chroot. The filesystem is simply coming from the image. But, a container adds additional isolation not available when simply using chroot.

Next steps

In this section, you learned about containers and images.

In the next section, you’ll containerize your first application.

Containerize an application