What do you use docker for?

[Jaccouille]

I used to make VM with virtualBox to make small development environment, for testing new language, recently I got some issue with them and lost time reinstalling some.

I've heard about docker for years, but didn't take the time to look at it before, now I am looking at tutorials to set up environment like, Database/Server/Development, e.g mysql/Apache/PHP, just trying out thing and slowly learning stuff.

Even though I've heard about it, I've thinking about using it only recently due to this time problem I encountered with my VM.

I don't have much imagination, I was wondering if you guys, could explain what are you using docker for if you're using it.

 

[fears]

Docker is nice for having an easily reproducible development or production environment. At my job we use it to deploy our products to production servers as part of the install process.

The nice thing about this is all the host needs is docker installed.

Think about this scenario..

I want postgres, nginx, a web server for my website and a java backend rest api running. They all have different third party package requirements, some may clash or have different OS requirements. Using a collection of docker containers I can easily separate these services, 1 container each. I can automate their setup using a docker file and have them on different OS. All within the same host machine and with a minimal footprint on the host.

 

[Cespie]

At my work, we use docker to run multiple environments for the same application. Part of the reason is being able to run different test flows simultaneously without conflicts. It's pretty easy to swap between environments, which makes for a pretty flexible resource.

 

[Ralle]

I use it for Hive. My PHP-FPM docker image is custom and has all my MPQ, BLP, ImageMagick, PHP-GD, PHP-ZIP configured to run correctly every time I switch server or setup a new development computer. It makes things much easier to manage because they are boxed and transferrable.

Hive consists of the following images: php, nginx, mysql, elasticsearch, memcached.