Docker your 1st step to self-hosting

Hi guys👋, It’s been a while from my last blog. In this blog let’s see what is Docker and how it can help you in your Self-Hosting journey.

Self Hosting

Self-Hosting means running software on your own computer, rather than relying on third-party providers. This gives you more control over your data, privacy, and customization options.

Docker

Docker is a visualization tool, that allows you to package all dependencies that are required to run a software.

Now you can run this package on any system that has Docker installed, without worrying about compatibility issues.

Running your software in Docker is a 3 step process:

1. Dockerfile: Configuration file contains what dependencies are required to run the software.
2. Image: It is package created using Dockerfile. It contains all the dependencies required to run the software.
3. Container: It is a running instance of your software.

Example

• Assume you’ve a html portfolio page.
• We’ll host this page using Docker on your laptop.
• We’ll make it accessible over internet.

# Assume this is your project structure
|-- portfolio
    |-- index.html
    |-- Dockerfile

• Install Docker in your system from here
• Open Docker Desktop application and make sure it’s running.
• Let’s edit Dockerfile.

# You can find more details about Dockerfile commands here👇
# https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/

# FROM command specifies the base image
# Using official nginx image as base image to serve our html page
FROM nginx:stable-alpine

# RUN command executes command
# Remove default nginx website html files
RUN rm -rf /usr/share/nginx/html/*

# COPY command copies files from host to Docker image
# Copy your website files to nginx html directory
COPY ./index.html /usr/share/nginx/html

# EXPOSE command exposes port to host machine
# Expose port 80 We can access our website on http://localhost:8080
EXPOSE 80

# CMD command specifies the command to run when container starts
# Start nginx server and running in foreground
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

• Now let’s create Docker image (package of our software) using this Dockerfile

# Here my-portfolio is the name of the image
# Run this command in terminal from portfolio directory
docker build -t my-portfolio .

# After successful build, you can see the image in your local docker images
docker images

• Now let’s run this image in a container (running instance of our software)

# Here my-portfolio is the name of the image we created earlier
# -d flag runs the container in detached mode (in background)
# -p flag maps port 80 of container to port 8080 of host machine
docker run -d -p 8080:80 my-portfolio

• Now open your browser and visit http://localhost:8080, you can see your portfolio page is up and running 🎉
• Now to make it accessible over internet, you can use tools like ngrok to expose your localhost to internet.
• Install ngrok from here

# Expose your localhost:8080 to internet
ngrok http 8080

• Now you can share the generated ngrok URL with your friends to access your portfolio page over internet.

All companies and individuals who build Open Source software mostly have a Docker image of their software.

Those images can be found on Docker Hub. You can try out their software on your own machine using Docker.

Example:

• Let’s self-host MongoDB database on your machine using Docker.

# Pull MongoDB image from Docker Hub
docker pull mongo

# Run MongoDB
docker run -d -p 27017:27017 --name my-mongo mongo

I just showed you tip of the iceberg. There are lot more things to explore in Docker. If you got basic understanding on these concepts, you can self-host mostly any software out there.

1. Docker Compose
2. Docker Volumes
3. Docker Networks
4. Docker Secrets
5. Docker Configs

Yess, at start i too felt same in beginning, Docker provides other advantages:

• Application Isolation read more
• Scalability

Sure! Here are some resources to learn Docker:

• JS Mastery
• Jims Garage