Understanding Docker Compose

A common problem in app development, testing and deployment is knowing whether an application will work perfectly on a real machine. Like Docker's containers, virtualisation technology helps unify environments and ensures that attention is paid only to the application itself instead of troubleshooting environments. You might need many containers to package the dependencies and services for a single application. Docker Compose is a handy tool for efficiently creating, managing and deploying such multi-container environments, using only simple commands and files.

This short course will introduce you to the Docker Compose tool, starting from its installation procedure to the process involved in deploying environments to local hosts or the cloud. You will learn to create a sample environment, use volumes to persist data beyond a container's life cycle and add dependencies for your application. You will also gain needed exposure to networking in Docker, learn to link and isolate containers, use aliases to create alternate names for a container and use external networks.

We will explore the command line interface (CLI) in configuring environments, changing logs and more. We will also introduce you to ‘environment’ files. Finally, we will explain extending services in Compose, using configuration files and the 'extends' key and how to deploy environments. Developers who work with Docker environments or programmers interested in learning to create and manage environments will find this course particularly useful. So start today and learn to set up and manage multiple-container Docker environments with Compose in under three hours.