Introduction to Docker Compose

This lesson provides an overview of Docker Compose.

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In this chapter, we’ll deploy and manage a multi-container application using Docker Compose. When we talk about Docker Compose, we usually shorten it to Compose and always write it with a capital “C”.

Docker Compose – The TLDR

We create modern cloud-native applications by combining many small services to form a useful app. These applications are called microservices, and they offer many benefits, such as self-healing, autoscaling, and rolling updates. However, they can be complex.

For example, you might have a microservices app with the following services:

  • Web front-end
  • Ordering
  • Catalog
  • Back-end datastore
  • Logging
  • Authentication
  • Authorization
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Instead of hacking together complex scripts and long docker commands, Compose lets you describe the application in a simple YAML file called a Compose file. You then use the Compose file with the docker compose command to deploy and manage the app.

You should keep your Compose files in a version control system such as Git.

That’s the basics. Let’s dig deeper.