Understanding Docker

Many a time, docker is seen as a very difficult and techy area of web development. But it is not entirely so. My plan for the next few minutes of this read is to convince you otherwise.

Now what is Docker?
Docker is a popular and major platform or toolkit used to build, manage, deploy and ship systems. the docker engines allows us to run and distribute applications easily.

Now so far we have heard some keywords and may be wondering what they mean other than their regular pedestrian meaning.

Containers: A docker container is a lightweight, standard, and secure environment that allows one to ship their applications, and run it in an isolated part of the operating system (OS). They are instances of docker images that run the actual application. Containers allow for speedy and reliable packaging of code and its dependencies. It is important to note that whatever is written in a container, stays in the container.

Virtual Machine: VM as the name implies a virtual machine is a full system that can be run locally in another computer e.g simulators, emulators, parallel machines e.t.c VMs allow a computer run on a host machine.

Containerization is the process of packaging an app and all its dependency into an easy to use container image.

A docker Image is a blueprint of an application, which forms the basis of a container. docker images includes the app and all the app dependencies which

The following commands are very important to run docker

1. docker build: docker build is used to create a docker image
2. docker run: this command is used to run a docker image
3. docker image rm: this command is used to remove a docker image
4. docker container start / docker start: this command is used to start a container
5. docker stop : use this command to stop a container
6. docker rm: is used to remove a container
7. docker run -d : this command is used to run a new detached container