Docker
Explore how Docker containers provide a lightweight, standardized environment to run code across systems. Learn to write Dockerfiles, build images, and deploy containers on cloud instances, gaining skills for scalable and reproducible model deployments.
Containers
Docker, and other platform-as-a-service tools, provide a virtualization concept called containers. Containers run on top of a host operating system, but provide a standardized environment for code running within the container. One of the key goals of this virtualization approach is that you can write code for a target environment, and any system running Docker can run your container.
Benefits of containers
The benefits of containers include:
- Lightweight alternative to virtual machines, which provide similar functionality.
- Faster to spin up, while providing the same level of isolation as virtual machines.
- Can re-use layers from other containers, making it much faster to build and share containers.
- Great solution to use when you need to run conflicting versions of Python runtimes or libraries, on a single machine.
What is a Dockerfile?
With Docker, you author a file called a Dockerfile that is used to define the dependencies for a container. The result of building the Dockerfile is a Docker Image, which packages all of the runtimes, libraries, and code needed to run an app. A Docker Container is an instantiated image that runs an ...
