Docker Installation and Docker Commands

Starting off #

Docker Machine is a tool that can install Docker hosts. From a technical point of view, the installation is easy to do. Docker Machine loads an ISO CD image with boot2docker from the Internet.

boot2docker is a Linux distribution and provides an easy way to run Docker containers. After that, Docker Machine starts a virtual machine with this boot2docker image.

Particularly convenient in the Docker machine is the fact that using Docker containers on external Docker hosts is just as easy as using local Docker containers. The Docker command-line tools only need to be configured to use the external Docker host. Afterward, the use of the Docker host is transparent.

Overview #

The figure below shows an overview of Docker Machine. Docker Machine installs a virtual machine on which Docker is installed. Docker and other tools, such as Docker Compose, can then use this virtual machine as if it were the local computer.