Understanding and working with docker containers

In the last post we discussed an introduction to docker, in this post we will understand what a container is and how important containers are in docker world.

What is containers ?

• They are an isolated, resource controlled, and portable operating environment.
• Basically, a container is an isolated place where an application can run without affecting the rest of the system and without the system affecting the application. Containers are the next evolution in virtualization.
• If you were inside a container, it would look very much like you were inside a freshly installed physical computer or a virtual machine.

We can browse all the different containers from http://hub.docker.com 

So what these containers has ?

• Operating System
• Software that you build
• Dependencies to run the software’s (like pre-requisite softwares)
• Environment variables
• And you name it

What if I change something in my software and dependencies ?

Docker includes git-like capabilities for tracking successive versions of a container, inspecting the diff between versions, committing new versions, rolling back etc. The history also includes how a container was assembled and by whom, so you get full traceability from the production server all the way back to the upstream developer. Docker also implements incremental uploads and downloads, similar to git pull, so new versions of a container can be transferred by only sending diffs.

Does these containers only has linux OS in it ?

Starting Windows Sever 2016*, there will be Windows Server containers, which provide greater level of flexibilities, using this, we can integrate with existing Windows technologies such as .NET, ASP.NET, PowerShell and more. Here is the complete video of the above discussion Thanks for reading the post and watching the video!!! Please leave your comments and let me know if there is anything I should update in this post. Thanks, Karthik KK