Deploying First Container

Containerization helps you build software in layers, containers inspire distributed development, packaging, and publishing in the form of containers. Developers or IT administrators just have to choose a base OS image, create customized layers as per their requirements, and distribute using public or private repositories. Microsoft and Docker together have provided an amazing toolset that helps you build and deploy containers in no time. It is very easy to set up a dev/test environment as well. Microsoft Windows Server OS or Windows 10 Desktop OS comes with Plug and Play (PnP) features for running Windows Server Containers or Hyper-V Containers. Docker Hub, a public repository for images, serves as a huge catalog of customized images built by community or Docker enthusiasts. The images on Docker Hub are freely available for anyone to download, customize, and distribute.

In this chapter, we will learn how to create and configure container development environments. We will learn how to use images from Docker Hub to create containers and also understand how to create our own images from scratch using the Windows base OS images. We will be using both Docker CLI and PowerShell commands together to create our first image and container.

The following are a few more concepts that you will learn in this chapter:

• Preparing a Windows Server Containers environment
• Pulling images from Docker Hub
• Installing base OS images
• Creating custom images using Docker client
• Creating our first container
• Authoring Dockerfiles
• Managing Docker Service