Guide To Azure Docker And Its Features

Azure Docker Features  

• Contemporize Your Applications and Infrastructure

Azure Docker provides the best, accurate, easy, and faster solution to migrate your applications to the Azure cloud, allows vast security, and helps contemporize the app services.

Using Docker deployment on Azure, developers can easily deploy modern and standard Linux or Windows-based applications with enterprise-level security, support, and scale.

• Get Integrated Management, Protection, and Cost Savings

Azure Docker can drive down functional costs and enhance efficiency with the consistent functional model, protected supply chain, and cloud apps within docker containers, using these below advantages.

• Manages and supports Windows and Linux Server containers.
• Provides the scalability and flexibility to sustain microservices and classic app workloads.
• Integrated graphical user interface-based management and process.
• Capabilities of role-based access control (RBAC) and support for the lightweight directory, access protocol (LDAP), and Azure Active Directory integration.
• End-to-end security standard for a more secure supply chain.

• Scale Globally With a Few Clicks

Enables a single registry to help users and host the applications as per their convenience using multi-master geo-replication. It can also synchronize an artifact across all models by moving it to any one model. Help speed-up deployment by utilizing organized webhooks to get notifications when a local pull is available.

• Portability 

Containers enable a standardized packaging format and maintain all the necessary features to run the particular application. It gives the right solution to real-time problems with the advantage of portability to run it on any platform.

Become a Certified Expert in AWS, Azure and GCP

Caltech Cloud Computing BootcampExplore Program

Stages of Docker Process

Here we have three stages of the Docker process.

Stage 1. Build

• In the build process, we need to start and leverage the docker image in the application code and on Windows and Mac. Build the multi-container application using Docker Compose. 
• Incorporate and configure the development Docker pipeline performs with all development tools, such as VS Code, GitHub, and CircleCI.
• Package applications as transportable container images to operate in all environments consistently from on-premises Kubernetes to Azure ACI, Google GKE, and more.

Stage 2. Share 

• We have the Leverage Docker Trusted Content at this stage, including Docker Official Images from Docker Verified Publishers from the Docker Hub repository.
• It helps to innovate by collaborating with team members and developers and by efficiently publishing images to Docker Hub.
• Provide personalized developer access to images with role-based security access control and provide insights into movement history with Docker Hub Audit Logs.

Stage 3. Run 

• This process helps to deliver multiple applications with no difficulty and deploy it in all the environments with the various stages of design, testing, staging, and production desktop or cloud-native.
• Deploy your applications in respective containers independently and in various languages. Decrease the risk of conflict between languages, libraries, or frameworks.
• Velocity development with the help of Docker Compose CLI and using a single command, launch your applications locally and in the cloud environment using Azure ACI, AWS ECS.

Azure Container Registry

The Azure container registry is the private registry where we can collect and store and handle private Docker container images and their additional interconnected artifacts. We can also consider it is the hosting and publishing platform for Docker images founded by Microsoft.

Building a Container Registry on Azure

As the initial step, we can build a container registry on Azure to accumulate and create our Docker containers. 

Step 1: Please click the Create button on your Azure portal home page and go to Containers -> Container Registry as per the below image.

Step 2: On the registry creation page, fill in the information along with the name for your registry.

Step 3: Now Click the Review + Create button. On the review page, check and confirm your registry information.

Step 4: Click on Create to trigger the registry creation process steps as per the Azure CLI to create your resources with the below command to create the registry:

az acr create --name circlecigwpregistry --resource-group Demos-Group --sku standard --admin-enabled true

Now, here we have the newly created registry circlecigwpregistry. Using this step, we can also create different substitute names.

Here's How to Land a Top Software Developer Job

Full Stack Developer - MERN StackExplore Program

Azure Docker Container

The Docker Azure Integration allows developers to use native Docker commands to deploy applications with the help of Azure Container Instances (ACI) while creating cloud-native applications. It helps developers quickly deploy applications with the help of Docker CLI or VS Code extension to switch best and seamless development from a local environment to cloud deployment.

Integrating from Docker and Microsoft developer technologies permits and recommends developers to use the Docker CLI as per the below steps.

• Log in to Azure Portal
• Set up the ACI context in one Docker command, permitting to switch from a local context to a cloud context and deploy applications fast and efficiently.
• Streamline single container and multi-container application development utilizing the Compose specification, permitting a developer to gather all required Docker-compatible commands seamlessly for the first time natively using a cloud container service.
• Run Docker containers on ACI.

Docker helps developers deploy locally and allows them to seamlessly deploy Docker containers on ACI using docker run or deploy multi-container applications defined in a Compose file using the docker-compose up command.

Now let us further explore the above-mentioned steps in detail.

Log in to Azure Portal

• Run the below command to log into Azure; it will allow you to open your web browser.            

       docker login azure

• Enter your Azure login credentials. 
• If the Docker CLI cannot open a browser, it will go back to the Azure device code flow and allow you to connect manually. Here you can log in using an Azure Service Principal, using the below command.

        docker login azure --client-id xx --client-secret yy --tenant-id zz

Create an ACI Context

Here we can create a Docker context connected with ACI to run containers in ACI. Creating an ACI context needs an Azure subscription, a resource group, and a region. 

For example, here we have a new context called testacicontext:

$ docker context create aci testacicontext

This command automatically allows you to use your Azure login credentials to specify your subscription IDs and resource groups. 

Select the subscription and group as per the below example        

subscription-id, --resource-group, and --location.

Run a Container

There are two ways (mentioned below) to use the new ACI context to run the container using the docker command.

Use the -context flag with the Docker command and define the run command with the created ACI context as per the below command.      

docker --context testacicontext run -p 80:80 nginx

• To view logs from your container, run:

        docker logs <CONTAINER_ID>

• To execute a command in a running container, run:

        docker exec -t <CONTAINER_ID> COMMAND

• To stop and remove a container from ACI, run:

        docker stop <CONTAINER_ID>

        docker rm <CONTAINER_ID>

Advance your career as a MEAN stack developer with the Full Stack Web Developer - MEAN Stack Master's Program. Enroll now!

Conclusion

We hope this article helped you understand Azure Docker. In this article, we discussed the concept of various samples using Azure container registry with the container deploy examples. This article will be helpful to professional developers from Java and .net backgrounds, application architectures, cloud specialists, testers, and other learners looking for various ways to use Azure Docker with the containers.

Besides pursuing varied courses provided by Simplilearn, you can also sign up on our SkillUp platform. This platform, a Simplilearn initiative, offers numerous free online courses to help with the basics of multiple programming languages, including cloud docker hub. You can also opt for our Full-Stack Web Development Certification Course to improve your career prospects.