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Understanding Docker

Docker

Docker is important in the container landscape, but Docker is NOT the only way to run containers

When it started in 2013, Docker offered the following:

  • Container image format
  • Dockerfile, which is a method for building container images
  • A way to manage container images
  • A way to run containers
  • A way to manage container instances
  • A solution to share container images

As Docker is so common, we'll use it to demonstrate containers here. podman is the main alternative to Docker.

Alternative to Docker

With the launch of RHEL 8, Red Hat started offering podman as an alternative to Docker

  • podman runs containers without the need of having a daemon directly on top of the cri-o container runtime
  • buildah is the related service that is used for managing container images