Explore the basics of Docker and containers, install Docker on multiple platforms, run your first container, and learn Docker architecture and container images in this beginner-friendly section.

Explore how containers differ from virtual machines, how container runtime environments use namespaces and cgroups for isolation, and why they enable scalable, portable deployment.

Explore how containers drive efficient, scalable microservices through a build, ship, and run workflow. Learn how Docker, an open platform, enables containerized apps across Linux, Mac, Windows, and Kubernetes.

Install docker on linux by adding the gpg key and configuring the stable repository for ubuntu. Install docker CLI, engine, and containerd, enable non-root access, and verify with docker version.

Watch a practical demo to run your first docker container by checking the Docker service status and executing docker run hello-world to launch a container.

Install Docker on Windows requires Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise/Education 64-bit, 4 GB RAM, and Hyper-V with Containers enabled; download Docker Desktop, run as administrator, restart, then run a container via PowerShell.

Download Docker Desktop for Mac from the official site, which detects Apple Silicon M1 architecture, mount the docker.dmg, and drag docker.app into the Applications folder to complete installation.

Explore Docker architecture and the build-ship-run model, focusing on the Docker client, Docker host, and Docker registries, and how dockerd runs images via Docker Hub.

Explore Docker Hub, the No. 1 image registry, and learn to browse millions of images, apply labels and filters, and view image info pages like BusyBox.

Discover which Docker images are used and why, focusing on Ubuntu and BusyBox OS images, Apache and Nginx web servers, MySQL and Redis databases, and WordPress CMS.

Master Dockerfiles to write, build images, and run containers, create your own Dockerfile and image, and prepare for the exam with hands-on practice in the Docker Certified Associate course.

Explore how a Dockerfile guides the Docker daemon to build the image, defines the context of the Dockerfile with dependencies and code in the same folder, and creates cacheable layers.

Learn to write a Dockerfile with a proper build context and core instructions—ARG, FROM, RUN, EXPOSE, ENTRYPOINT, and CMD—while understanding base images and layers.

Learn to build an nginx image from a Dockerfile, understand image layers and tagging, and run a container with port mapping to verify a running web server.

Learn advanced dockerfile instructions, including arg, env, label, volume, workdir, copy, add, healthcheck, expose, stopsignal, entrypoint, and cmd, to build robust nginx images with persistent data.

Build the updated nginx dockerfile with -f nginx-updated and nginx-v1 as context, run the container, verify health, and publish ports with -P. Inspect with docker exec, environment variables, and volumes.

Create a Docker Hub account by signing up, verifying your email, and choosing the free plan to push a Docker image during this Docker certified associate exam prep course module.

Publish a docker image to Docker Hub by tagging as ceruleanhub/nginx:v1, logging in, and pushing with digest verification; explore layer caching and repository details, plus adding tags like nginx-v2.

Explore Docker images through hands-on building from various sources, inspect layers, share and clean up images, and pull from an internal registry; learn the Docker CLI with flags and filters.

Explore how to use a GitHub repository as a Docker build context, tag images with -t, and build Nginx-based images from a Dockerfile, then push to Docker Hub.

Learn to build Docker images by piping the Dockerfile as input to docker build, removing the build context, and using the ADD instruction with a URL.

Explore building Docker images with compressed build contexts by creating a tarball of the Dockerfile and piping it to docker build, generating nginx-tarball.

Demonstrates building Docker images with BuildKit, enabling it via DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 or daemon.json, and highlights parallel builds, improved caching, tagging, and efficient workflows.

Explore multi-stage builds to keep Docker images lean. See stage 0 with Ubuntu 18.04 and Git, then clone a repo to produce a lighter final image.

Remove unused Docker images with commands like docker rmi and docker image prune, learn referencing by tag or image ID, handle untagged and intermediate layers, and force removal with --force.

Explore how to search Docker images with the Docker CLI, filter official images, limit results, and customize output formats to find MySQL-related images on Docker Hub.

Learn to host a private docker registry using a container, map port 5000, and push and pull images to and from localhost:5000, while understanding registry isolation and image layers.

Explore how Docker image layers form a boot file system and base image stored under /var/lib/docker/overlay, with intermediate read-only layers used for caching.

Explore how docker images are built from layers and how docker history reveals add, copy, cmd and entrypoint details, using registry:latest, and learn to format output with --format.

Explore how to inspect a docker image with docker image inspect, decoding the image json fields—id, repository tags, digest, creation time, env vars, entrypoint, and overlay2 graph driver.

Save and share docker images using the save-load method: create a tarball with docker save, host it on GitHub, and load it on another host with docker load.

Trace the container lifecycle from creation to termination, learn writable layers, privileges, and how run, pause, stop, and kill commands control containers.

Master docker container operations: rename with docker rename, attach with docker attach, and run commands with docker exec; learn how -d keeps containers alive and how rename overwrites old names.

Demonstrate how to ship running containers using docker commit and export-import methods, converting writable layers into images and exporting file systems as tarballs for migration and registry sharing.

Monitor real-time container resource usage with docker stats across containers, including cpu and memory metrics. Learn docker top, diff, wait, and exec to track processes, file changes, and exit codes.

This demo shows sharing files with running containers using docker cp, illustrating source-destination rules for copy operations, and updating an apache-server container's index.html.

Explore how to inspect a running Docker container with Docker inspect, reviewing container metadata, state, root process, network and storage details, and practical filters for focused results.

Learn to view and stream container logs with docker logs, using --follow and --tail, and understand Docker's default json file logging driver and logging agent.

List containers to identify stopped and running ones, remove a stopped container with docker rm, prune dangling containers using docker container prune to free resources.

Explore Docker container networking, including Docker's container networking model, network drivers, and network types, then configure DNS and isolate a container from a network stack.

Explore how docker networks and drivers enable container communication via linux bridges like docker0 and veth endpoints, and how IPAM assigns private IPs and subnets.

Explore docker network drivers—host, bridge, macvlan, and overlay—and how docker networks use cgroups and namespaces to manage connectivity, IPAM, and swarm-driven ingress networking.

Explore docker's default bridge network, listing networks and inspecting bridge details to see container connections and IP addressing with ICC rules.

Learn how to create and use user-defined bridge networks in docker, configure custom subnets and gateways, connect containers, and test isolation and inter-network communication.

Learn how Docker host networking works: a container on host network is possible only with a new container, exposing the host's nginx page.

Learn how to create a macvlan network with Docker using the macvlan driver on a GCP VM to connect a container for legacy apps.

Disable a container's networking with the none network, creating a standalone, sandboxed instance that has no IP, no gateway, and can only communicate with the Docker daemon.

Learn how docker handles dns by using the host's resolv.conf or the --dns flag to configure a custom nameserver for containers, since nameservers affect resolution and search engine rankings.

Master container storage concepts, including file system layout, block vs object storage, volumes, bind mounts, and tmpfs. Practice data sharing with third-party drivers through a hands-on, easy assignment.

Explore how Docker storage drivers back up the writable container layer using volumes, bind mounts, and tmpfs, and compare host-based and external cloud storage options for reliable backups.

Understand how copy-on-write in containers preserves original images while allowing changes via a writable layer, ensuring integrity and creating new images when changes are committed.

Explore Docker volumes in action by listing, creating, and mounting volumes to containers. Learn how volumes reflect and preserve data, and how read-only mounts enhance security.

Explore how third party volume drivers extend Docker with plugins, test a sample plugin using docker volume create and mount to BusyBox, and inspect plugin directories under /var/lib/docker.

Share data across containers by mounting alpha-busybox's volume into beta-busybox with the --volumes-from approach, optionally read-only, for compute-intensive tasks using multiple isolated processes.

Learn to list and remove docker volumes, start with vol-plugin-busybox, remove containers as needed, and prune dangling volumes with docker volume prune to free host storage, preparing for bind mounts.

Demonstrates how to use bind mounts with docker run, mounting a host path to a container path via the -v flag, highlighting bidirectional data sharing and lifecycle behavior.

Scale container orchestration with Docker Swarm by learning Swarm architecture, setting up a swarm cluster, deploying scalable containerized applications with swarm services, using overlay networks, and performing rolling updates.

Learn container orchestration with Docker Swarm, forming a cluster of hosts with managers and workers, and routing service requests via the ingress routing mesh.

Set up a three-node docker swarm on Google Cloud VMs with a manager and two workers, install Docker, initialize swarm mode, and use join tokens to connect workers.

Deploy your first service on a docker swarm cluster with docker service create for a redis container in replicated mode, then monitor status with docker service ls and ps.

Explore swarm overlay networks, including ingress and the gossip cluster, and learn to create a user-defined overlay like my-swarm-net with encryption and attachable options for services via --network.

Connect an nginx service to a user-defined overlay swarm network named my-swarm-net using docker service create with constraints, mounts, and port publishing to expose 80 on 8080.

Learn to roll out and roll back Docker Swarm service updates by updating node availability, removing constraints, scaling replicas, and using rollback when needed.

Explore container orchestration at the cluster level with Docker swarm, including RAFT consensus and quorum, high availability, disaster management, and cluster locking.

Learn how a multi-manager swarm maintains high availability with a leader and reachable managers, uses quorum through an odd number of managers, and applies Raft consensus for leader elections.

Promote worker nodes to managers, observe leader election in a multi-manager swarm, and demote leaders to reveal failure risks, then confront swarm leave and disaster scenarios.

Explore how Docker swarm maintains availability by running three Nginx replicas, rescheduling tasks when a worker goes down, and allowing the downed node to return and resume hosting future tasks.

Learn to recover a docker swarm cluster after a disaster by backing up swarm state, forcing a new cluster, and using a global redis service to minimize downtime.

Learn to lock the swarm cluster by encrypting TLS keys and Raft logs, enable auto lock after restarts, and unlock or rotate keys using docker swarm unlock-key.

List and remove swarm services, then prune the cluster by deleting down and active nodes with Docker node rm, using force when needed to achieve a clean, organized swarm.

We cover Docker Compose and Docker Stack in this section of the Docker Certified Associate exam prep course, addressing their relevance in the syllabus and practical use.

Explore how docker compose uses a yaml compose file to define services, volumes, and networks, and learn how docker stack builds scalable services on a swarm cluster.

Deploy a WordPress stack with docker stack using a docker-compose.yaml (version 3.3) to run MySQL and WordPress on an overlay network. Verify exposure with docker stack commands.