Only this weekend I downloaded a Docker package from https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows. This package allows you to run very small light weight containers on your server than act as components to perform a certain task. In a way, it looks like a virtual machine. It has no direct connect connection to the host machine and it runs in isolation.
Once it is installed, one only notices a small icon in the task bar that shows its presence.
To turn it in something useful, one must create a directory with a so-called “Dockerfile” in it. In that dockerfile one may store a series of commands that indicate what the Dockerfile container is supposed to do. An example of such file can be found here On my machine, the directory looks like this:
The container is then created with:
docker build -t mysql .
The container can then be started from the command line with:
docker run --name mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=bonvegni -d mysql:8
To get access to the container, one uses this command:
docker exec -it mysql bash
This is as far as I got. I have a MySql database running. I can access this database from within the container. That look normal. But the challenge is how to communicate with this database. Something to figure out.