How to deploy a container with Docker Compose

Docker is an amazing tool. Docker is like a mini virtual machine that runs without the overhead and fuss of VMs or hypervisors. It is common for tech enthusiasts and businesses to use Docker containers to run their applications. It’s all great, but what if you need to run multiple Docker container simultaneously?
This is when Docker Compose would be useful. You might be asking, “How can I deploy a container using Docker Compose?” You are in luck, because this is exactly what we will be discussing today!
What is Docker Compose?
Docker Compose allows you to launch multiple Docker containers that depend on each others. You could, for example, create four Docker containers to host a LAMP server with WordPress. This is in contrast to using one monolithic container. Let’s look at the benefits.
Docker is a great tool for deploying and launching applications in multiple environments. Docker can be thought of as a mini VM. A Docker container, however, uses the kernel, memory scheduler and other resources of the host computer, unlike a VM. These resources can be shared with other Docker containers as well as the host computer.
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Start training These dedicated resources are traditionally not shared between the virtualized computer and the host operating system. Virtual machines also contain virtualized parts of all your hardware and software, including an OS installation.
A docker container is an application package that contains all dependencies. This application container can be installed on multiple computers without the need to configure it again. Containers use the host OS, but do not contain their own.
This is amazing for single-use apps like FFMPEG or MongoDB. Let’s take a look at the Code Server example. Code Server is a web-based edition of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. Instead of launching VS Code from your computer, you can use Code Server in a browser window.
This can be very useful for a team. Software development teams often have specific requirements and criteria for their development environments and codebase. It can be difficult to set up their development environments from scratch in order to meet these criteria. When a software development team hires a new programmer, they simply need to clone Code Server and update their Git credentials. This process can be even quicker by containerizing Code-Server in a Docker container.
What happens if you want code-server and mongoDB to be containerized together? MongoDB isn’t updated often. Microsoft updates Visual Studio Code frequently, however. If MongoDB and Code Server were contained within the same container, Microsoft would have to rebuild the entire container every time it updated Visual Studio Code (alongside Mongo DB). This seems like a lot of work. This complexity increases the chance of making mistakes when building the container.
You could also keep MongoDB or Code Server in their own container. This way, Microsoft will only need to rebuild the Code Server container when it updates VS Code. Docker Compose allows you to link these two containers and allow you to start and stop them like one container.
How do I deploy a container with Docker Compose
Docker Compose is versatile and can be used in many different ways. We won’t be covering all edge cases for Compose because of its versatility. Instead, we will discuss how to launch multiple prebuilt containers together. Docker Hub can pull the containers below as if they were being launched individually.
Let’s use!