Chapter 1, Understanding Container Scenarios and an Overview of Docker, is about the basic containerization concept with the help of application and OS-based containers. We will throw some light on the Docker technology, its advantages, and the life cycle of Docker containers.

Chapter 2, Docker Installation, will go over the steps to install Docker on various Linux distributions – Ubuntu, CoreOS, CentOS, Red Hat Linux, Fedora, and SUSE Linux.

Chapter 3, Building Base and Layered Images, teaches that a mission-critical task in production-ready application containerization is image building. We will also discuss building images manually from scratch. Moving ahead, we will explore building layered images with a Dockerfile and enlist the Dockerfile commands in detail.

Chapter 4, Devising Microservices and N-Tier Applications, will explore example environments designed seamlessly from development to test, eliminating the need for manual and error-prone resource provisioning and configuration. In doing so, we will touch briefly on how a microservice applications can be tested, automated, deployed, and managed.

Chapter 5, Moving Around Containerized Application, will take a look at Docker registry. We will start with the basic concepts of Docker public repository using Docker Hub and the use case of sharing containers with a larger audience. Docker also provides the option to deploy a private Docker registry, which we look into, that can be used to push, pull, and share the Docker containers internally in the organization.

Chapter 6, Making Containers Work, will teach you about privileged containers, which have access to all the host devices, and super-privileged containers, which show that the containers can run a background service that can be used to run services in Docker containers to manage the underlying host.

Chapter 7, Managing the Networking Stack of a Docker Container, will explain how Docker networking is powered with Docker0 bridge and its troubleshooting issues and configuration. We will also look at troubleshooting the communication issues between Docker networks and the external network. We look into containers communication across multiple hosts using different networking options, such as Weave, OVS, Flannel, and Docker's latest overlay network. We will compare them and look at the troubleshooting issues involved in their configuration.

Chapter 8, Managing Docker Containers with Kubernetes, explains how to manage Docker containers with help of Kubernetes. We will cover many deployment scenarios and troubleshooting issues while deploying Kubernetes on a Bare Metal machine, AWS, vSphere, or using minikube. We will also look at deploying Kubernetes pods effectively and debugging Kubernetes issues.

Chapter 9, Hooking Volume Baggage, will dive into data volumes and storage driver concepts related to Docker. We will discuss troubleshooting the data volumes with the help of the four approaches and look at their pros and cons. The first case of storing data inside the Docker container is the most basic case, but it doesn't provide the flexibility to manage and handle data in the production environment. The second and third cases are about storing the data using data-only containers or directly on the host. The fourth case is about using a third-party volume plugin, Flocker or Convoy, which stores the data in a separate block and even provides reliability with data, even if the container is transferred from one host to another or if the container dies.

Chapter 10, Docker Deployment in a Public Cloud - AWS and Azure, outlines Docker deployment on the Microsoft Azure and AWS public clouds.

You will need Docker 1.12+ installed on Windows, Mac OS,or Linux machines. Public cloud accounts of AWS, Azure and GCE might be required, which are mentioned in the respective sections of the chapters.

This book is intended to help seasoned solutions architects, developers, programmers, system engineers, and administrators troubleshoot common areas of Docker containerization. If you are looking to build production-ready Docker containers for automated deployment, you will be able to master and troubleshoot both the basic functions and the advanced features of Docker. Advanced familiarity with the Linux command line syntax, unit testing, the Docker registry, GitHub, and leading container hosting platforms and Cloud Service Providers (CSP) are the prerequisites. In this book you will also learn about ways and means to avoid troubleshooting in the first place. 

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Restart the cluster using the start_k8s.sh shell script."

A block of code is set as follows:

ENTRYPOINT /usr/sbin/sshd -D 
VOLUME ["/home"] 
EXPOSE 22 
EXPOSE 8080

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

Docker build -t username/my-imagename -f /path/Dockerfile

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Specify the Stack name, KeyPair, and cluster 3."

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