Containers are often advertised as solving a multitude of problems relating to delivering and maintaining highly available software in the always-on, global environment that most organizations must serve today, but how can they actually help you? What problems are you actually experiencing that can be solved with containers and its closely related technologies?

After becoming comfortable with container basics, most organizations will want to start putting them to use in their development workflow, and even the most traditional monolithic application relies on at least one additional service, like a database. So, how can developers quickly, and reliably spin up a set of fully-configured containerized services on their local system?

This class will introduce you to a tool called Docker Compose and teach you everything that you need to know about how to write a shareable docker-compose.yaml file that defines a set of related services which can be repeatably launched and torn down as needed.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

By the end of this course, you’ll understand:

• How to use Docker Compose to significantly simplify your ability to repeatedly launch complex multicontainer service clusters in local development environments

And you’ll be able to:

• Craft a working docker-compose.yaml file to enable repeatable deployments of complex inter-dependent services.
• Launch Docker compositions that can easily stand up complex inter-dependent services for local testing.
• Control, modify, and debug individual services

This course is for you because…

• You need to understand how to simplify local development for engineers working with complex systems.

Prerequisites

• Basic comfort with the Unix command line is helpful.
• Comfort working with Docker images and containers.

Recommended preparation:

• A modern computer and OS
• Recent Linux, OS X, or Windows 10
• root/admin rights
• CPU Virtualization extensions MUST be enabled in your BIOS/EFI
• Reliable and fast internet connectivity
• Docker Desktop or Engine (Community Edition)
• Linux users need to also install Docker Compose, separately.
• A graphical web browser
• A text editor
• A software package manager
• Git client
• General comfort with the command line will be helpful.
• Optionally, have the following command-line tools installed: tar, wget, curl, jq, and an SSH client
• Introduction to Docker images (live online training course with Sean Kane)
• Introduction to Docker containers (live online training course with Sean Kane)

Recommended follow-up:

• Introduction to Docker CI/CD (live online training course with Sean Kane)
• Read Docker: Up & Running, second edition (book)