docker containers application servers and application - docker

Experts.
I am newbie to Docker. Started exploring the docker and its tools and successfully created the docker setup [using toolbox in win 7] and created a websphere-liberty image and deployed my spring boot application as war [needed as war as per my company requirement]. Also linked to eclipse, so I can develop and run from eclipse and the application runs in docker container. I am in the process of creating an app image [war] for my application.
Now my question.
Architecturally what is the good approach and need help on how to do.
Create one container with Websphere-liberty image and manually add the application image in that.
Create two containers, one having Websphere-liberty and another with image of my application and make the application run on the server.
or any other good approaches ?

In my opinion, you should inherit from this image (https://hub.docker.com/_/websphere-liberty/) and COPY the war to the new image.
So if by "manually" you mean by using a Dockerfile, then yes solution number 1, otherwise just do what I explained to you.
Note: Do not add the war-file by using a volume like explained on the websphere-liberty image page... This is bad practice in my opinion and might only be suitable for dev, if suitable at all...

Related

How to create a single project out of multiple docker images

I have been working on a project where I have had several docker containers:
Three OSRM routing servers
Nominatim server
Container where the webpage code is with all the needed dependencies
So, now I want to prepare a version that a user could download and run. What is the best practice to do such a thing?
Firstly, I thought maybe to join everything into one container, but I have read that it is not recommended to have several processes in one place. Secondly, I thought about wrapping up everything into a VM, but that is not really a "program" that a user can launch. And my third idea was to maybe, write a script, that would download each container from Docker Hub separately and launch the webpage. But, I am not sure if that is best practice, or maybe there are some better ideas.
When you need to deploy a full project composed of several containers.
You may use a specialized tool.
A well known for mono-server usage is docker-compose:
Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications
https://docs.docker.com/compose/
You could provide to your users :
docker-compose file
your application docker images (ex: through docker hub).
Regarding clusters/cloud, we talk more about orchestrator like docker swarm, Kubernetes, nomad
Kubernetes's documentation is the following:
https://kubernetes.io/

How to create docker image of existing WAS 8.5.5.14?

I have Websphere Application Server 8.5.5.14 hosting my ERP. I want to dockerize the application and deploy it into Kubernetes cluster. Can anyone provide me information on how to create image out of my existing WAS 8.5.5.14.
In theory you could do this by creating a tar ball of the filesystem and importing it into docker to make an image via something like:
cat WAS.tar | docker import - appImage
but there's going to be a number of issues you'll need to avoid, for example, if you have resources (jdbc drivers,resource adapters, etc), the tarball will need to have all of those included. You'll also need to expose all of the required ports for your app and its administration. A better way and best practice to solve this would be to start with an IBM supported image of traditional WAS and build your system atop it.
There are detailed instructions to do this at https://github.com/WASdev/ci.docker.websphere-traditional#docker-hub-image
F Rowe's answer is good; if you follow their advice of using the official images you will be using WebSphere v9.0 in the container. You can use this tool that can help figure out if there are any changes you need to make to your application in order to get it working in the container. It also generates some of the wsadmin scripts to configure the server in the image.

How to create docker images for a system with multiple applications

I have installed and configured a system in EC2s using Ansible. It is 1 EC2 master with a few EC2 workers. Sometimes when I use ansible to update or reinstall configuration, it fails because either some package has been removed from open-source repositories, or the package is updated so not compatible with some other packages. And I learned that using docker-container can resolve these kind of configuration problems.
However, according to what I learned, each docker image will create image of one application (I guess one application means one process). But mine is a system which has airflow master webserver, airflow worker webserver, flower webserver, rabbitmq, airflow celery, several configuration files, etc. how can I create docker images for that? Should I create one docker image for each process? How do I know which linux folder should I go to create each docker image? How do I know which applications/processes I need to create? And how to combine these images to make them work together as a system?
Or maybe in my case I should not use docker image, Instead I should just create an EC2 image?
Use docker-compose.
Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications
https://docs.docker.com/compose/
each docker image will create image of one application (I guess one application means one process)
That is basically correct. You should create one docker-container per application. In theory you can have multiple process per container, but that doesn't matter in this case.
how can I create docker images for that?
In your case you should make one docker-container for airflow master webserver, one for airflow worker webserver, one for flower webserver, etc. And the you use a docker-compose.yml to link them all together.
Should I create one docker image for each process?
generally yes. (It may depend on your exact setup though)
And how to combine these images to make them work together as a system?
docker-compose.
How do I know which linux folder should I go to create each docker image?
I don't understand that question
How do I know which applications/processes I need to create?
You could create a deployment-diagram and then start from there.

Understanding docker principles

I have made a quite simple golang server and I need to deploy it to a digitalocean droplet.
I know that there can be issues with cross-building go apps in case they use cgo, so to not to think about it in future I decided to use docker, so my app will be build and run always in same environment.
The first thing I dont get is about developing an app. When I create a Dockerfile I use commands to add files from my project directory into newly created docker image. Then I run the container created from this image. But what if I edit my code? - as I understood I must stop the container, remove an image and then build it again. This is a bit tricky for such a common situation - or am I doing things wrong?
Second one - I have created a docker droplet on a DO: Whats the way to deploy my app?
I have to push my image to any docker repository and pull it on to the droplet?
Or I can upload it directly?
Or I have to scp my source code to droplet and run same process as on my local machine, building image and then runnjng a container?
But what if I edit my code? - as I understood I must stop the container, remove an image and then build it again. This is a bit tricky for such a common situation - or am I doing things wrong?
Don't delete the image just rebuild it. It will be much faster than the first initial build. Also why is it tricky? It's just one or two commands, you can create a bash or .bat script if it gets annoying.
I have created a docker droplet on a DO: Whats the way to deploy my app?
All three options are a possibility. For the second one you would have to set up your VM as a docker-hub repo which might be more than you need. Using docker hub isn't bad. You could also just build the image on your server. I recommend using docker hub for it's ease and having watchtower set up on your server to restart your web app on new image pushes.
Edit: the above advice was for a VM not a docker droplet. I'm not familiar with DO but this article should help:
https://blog.machinebox.io/deploy-machine-box-in-digital-ocean-385265fbeafd

Dockerizing a meteor app

So, the idea is to dockerize an existing meteor app from 2015. The app is divided into two (backend and frontend). I already made a huge bash script to handle all the older dependencies...software dependencies...etc etc. I just need to run the script and we get the app running. But the idea now is to create a docker image for that project. How should I achieve this? Should I create an empty docker image and run my script there?. Thanks. I'm new to docker.
A bit more info about the stack, the script, the dependencies could be helpful.
Assuming that this app is not in development, you can simply use eg an nginx image, and give it the frontend files to serve.
For the backend there is a huge variety of options like php, node, etc.
The dockerfile of your backend image should contain the installation and setup of dependencies (except for other services like database. There are images to do those separated).
To keep things simple you should try out docker-compose to configure your containers to act as a service as a whole (and save you some configurations).
Later, to scale things up, you could look for orchestration tools such as kubernetes. But I assume, this service is not there yet (based on your question). :)

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