11 great Docker tutorials for beginners to masters

Good news: DevOps is in demand. Bad news: You’re still using legacy tools. Good news: use Docker

In this article, we first understand DevOps and its demand in the IT industry. Learn about the importance of Docker in the DevOps world, including the best online tutorials to learn Docker.

What is DevOps?

In the IT industry, software is developed by a technical team, which is subdivided into two sub-teams called the development team and the operations team. The developer team’s job is to develop applications using code. Once the coding is complete, it must be handed over to the operations team. The operations team’s job is to deploy applications to servers.

Looks very simple and cool, right?

But wait a minute. It’s not that simple.

Both teams typically clash over issues such as design, testing, security, dependencies, and environment mismatches. These issues caused a lot of “back and forth” between the development and operations teams. These are the main problems that needed to be solved and were solved using DevOps concepts.

The software industry typically treats DevOps as a combination of developers and operations. DevOps is an idea that acts as a bridge between software development teams and operations teams. DevOps engineers typically collaborate, integrate, and communicate between the development and operations departments of an organization.

The primary role of DevOps is to continuously monitor and automate every step of the software development process. When you look at the DevOps lifecycle, it resembles the infinity (∞) symbol.

It’s a continuous process that starts with planning , coding , building , testing , releasing , deploying , operating , and ending with monitoring . These lifecycle stages are typically achieved with the help of DevOps tools. Git, Jenkins, Splunk, Nagios, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Docker, and Kubernetes are the top trending DevOps tools.

DevOps professionals are essentially IT professionals with expertise in DevOps tools, scripting, coding, and more.

IT industry demand

DevOps approaches have significantly helped companies around the world speed up their development processes. Companies that hire DevOps professionals have found that their implementation cycles are significantly improved with little to no failures.

Due to overwhelming growth and the accompanying adoption of a DevOps culture, it is predicted that by 2021, more than 50% of high-net-worth companies will have a high demand for DevOps professionals.

The industry is seeing an incredible 75% growth in demand for DevOps engineers over last year. The compensation component for this role is also attractive, as this profile requires a niche skill set.

According to Glassdoor salary statistics, the average annual salary for a DevOps engineer in India is around ₹6,06,445, which is $99,604 in the US, ₱45,679 in the UK, and ₱58,211 in Germany.

Click here to find out the average annual DevOps salary in your country. Candidates with strong knowledge of DevOps tools typically earn a higher salary, but it may also be determined by experience in the field. Overall, the career and salary prospects for DevOps engineers around the world appear to be very tough.

In the very first section, you learned that DevOps is a concept that reduces conflict between developers and operations teams. This is done using several DevOps tools commonly used by DevOps engineers. Each DevOps tool solves a problem related to the software development lifecycle. Taking the issue of environment mismatch, this can be resolved with the help of Docker.

First, let’s detail the problem statement and solution.

problem

The application was developed and built by the development team and submitted for testing. The application does not work because the environments of the development machine and test machine are different. This problem is called an environment mismatch. Now let’s talk about the solution.

solution

There are two solutions to this problem. The first is virtual machines, and the most important one is Docker. However, the problem with virtual machines is that they require a large amount of resources. So on the left is Docker, the best solution to this problem. Read this to understand the difference between VM and Docker.

How to solve it?

Docker is a lightweight container that replicates the same environment across multiple systems. From now on, developers will develop software within this container and hand it over to the testing team. This container has the same environment, so the application runs without any issues and the environment mismatch issue has been resolved.

Therefore, Docker is the perfect tool for the DevOps ecosystem.

Why is it important to learn Docker?

Docker’s main purpose is to automate the application deployment process by allowing multiple containers to run on the same machine. Docker always guarantees that if your application works well in your development environment, it will also work in your staging and production environments.

This gives you more control over all changes, as they are made using the same Docker container. This helps you achieve high productivity, high ROI, and save costs.

With all these benefits, enterprises are adopting Docker at an astonishing rate. Over 35 million applications have been shipped via Docker to date, and over 37 million Docker applications have been downloaded to date.

All companies that have adopted a DevOps culture use Docker to deliver efficient and agile applications to their customers. This is why companies looking for DevOps professionals should look for Docker specialists/professionals as a key requirement in the job description.

Online platform for learning Docker

Listed below are some of the best resources available on the web. Depending on your level of expertise, you can try one or the other. Share links for both text and video-based tutorials. Suitable for all types of users, from beginner to master level.

🧑‍💻 Video-based learning

For beginners

This course is designed for beginners by instructor Demetrius Johnson. This is a paid course on Udemy. All the lectures in this course are simple and easy to understand. This course includes demos and coding exercises so you can practice and quickly learn Docker commands.

Docker Certified Associate

Why not get Docker certified?

If you use Docker or your organization plans to adopt Docker soon and you are asked to participate, it makes sense to get proper training and get Docker certification.

Whizlabs offers over 6 hours of Docker training, giving you everything you need to learn and get started. Once you’re confident, you can assess yourself by taking practice tests before writing your exam. The Docker certification exam includes:

• orchestration
• networking
• Creating and managing images
• Installation and configuration
• Docker protection
• storage and volume

Read this to learn how to install Docker on CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Windows.

From zero to hero

This course is available for free on YouTube uploaded by Edureka. This course is perfect for beginners and experts who want to master containerization with Docker.

Short-term intensive course

Yet another paid through Udemy. This course starts with basic concepts and gradually goes deeper. As the course title reflects, the ideal audience is beginners as well as experts.

Start

Nigel from Pluralsight will guide you through getting started with Docker . This tutorial is perfect for beginners. It will help you gain a solid understanding of the basics of Docker.

deep dive

From beginner to advanced

Last on the list is Experfy’s paid course, Comprehensive Docker: From Beginner to Advanced . As the name suggests, the ideal target audience is beginners and professionals. Starts with the basics and covers all advanced features

📚Text-based resources

Docker for developers

Docker for Developers is a paid course by Arnaud Weil from Educative. This tutorial is primarily intended for developers with prior knowledge of programming or scripting languages ​​such as .NET Core, Java, Node.JS, PHP or Python, or JavaScript. It starts with very low-level details and touches on top-level content without requiring anything. Don’t get lost in technical terminology. This course is intended for readers of all levels.

For complete beginners

Docker Tutorial for Absolute Beginners is another text-based tutorial provided by Tutorials Point. It is freely available and explains all aspects of Docker container services. It also starts with basic installation and configuration of Docker and gradually moves to advanced topics such as networking and registers.

For Java developers

Java Code Geeks’ Docker Tutorials for Java Developers is the most widely read tutorial among Java developers. It is written by Andrey Redko, an experienced software developer. Use this tutorial to get your Docker-based application up and running in minimal time. This tutorial is aimed at Java developers, but frankly, readers of all levels can benefit from it.

docker 101

This tutorial comes from Docker itself. This course is perfect for beginners and professionals alike. This is a hands-on, self-paced tutorial that covers basics to advanced topics such as image building and networking.

conclusion

In the end, we hope you now have a better understanding of why DevOps professionals are necessary for companies that want to bring software products to market faster and more reliably. It also gave me a better understanding of why learning Docker is important and where it fits into the DevOps world.