Nigel Poulton - Docker for Sysadmins: Linux Windows VMware

This is a book about Docker, hand-crafted for system administrators. No prior knowledge required!

But what about developers and DevOps?

If youre a developer with no interest in operations then this book is not for you. If youre into DevOps then I think youll get a lot form the book.

To keep things short the book is not about showing you how to develop microservice apps with Docker. The book is about how the core Docker plumbing works. Youll learn the how and the why - the commands and the deep-dives. I really want to set you on your way to being as good at Docker as you already are at Linux, Windows or VMware.

Docker is coming and theres no hiding from it. Developers are all over it. In IT Ops, we need to get ready to support Dockerized apps in our business critical production environments.

Hell no!!!

All of those Dockerized apps that developers are creating need a solid Docker infrastructure to run on. And thats where IT Ops comes into the picture IT Ops will be asked to build and run high performance and highly available Docker infrastructures to support business applications. If were not skilled-up on Docker, were going to struggle.

At the time I decided to write the first edition of this book, so many of the Docker books already out there were terrible! They were a shocking mix of badly written, full of technical inaccuracies, or massively out of date. And sometimes they were all three! Its honestly not my intention to offend people, but go and read some of the reviews on Amazon. Some of the Docker books out there are a shameful waste of trees and paper!

So I decided to write something that was well written, technically accurate, and kept up to date. I want you to love this book.

If you buy the book and think its bad, call me out on Twitter, give the book bad reviews, do whatever you feel necessary. And Ill try and fix it. But Im confident you wont need to do any of that.

If you like my video courses youll probably like the book. If you dont like my video courses you probably wont like the book.

Ive divided the book into two sections:

• The general info stuff
• The technical stuff

The general info stuff covers things like - Who is Docker, Inc. What is the Docker project. What is the OCI. Why do we even have containers Not the coolest part of the book, but the kind of stuff thats important if you want a good rounded knowledge of Docker and containers. Its only a short section and you probably should read it.

The technical stuff is what the book is all about! This is where youll find everything you need to start working with Docker. It gets into the detail of images, containers and the increasingly important topic of orchestration. Youll get the theory so that you know how it all fits together, and youll get commands and examples to show you how it all works in practice.

Every chapter in the technical stuff section is divided into three parts:

• The TLDR
• The deep dive
• The commands

The TLDR will give you two or three paragraphs that you could use to explain the topic at the coffee machine.

TLDR or TL;DR, is a modern acronym meaning too long; didnt read. Its normally used to indicate something that was too long to bother reading. Im using it here in the book to indicate a short section that you can read if youre in a hurry and havent got time to read the longer deep dive that immediately follows it.

The deep dive is where well explain how everything works and go through the examples.

The Commands lists out all of the commands youve learned in an easy to read list with brief reminders of what each one does.

I think youll love that format.

Here are just a few other things I want you to know about the book.

Ive tried really hard to get the commands and outputs to fit on a single line without wrapping! So instead of getting this

you should get this.

For best results you might want to flip your reading device onto its side.

In doing this Ive had to trim some of the output from some commands, but I dont think youre missing anything important. However, despite all of this, if youre reading on a small enough device, youre still going to get some wrapping :-(

I know the book doesnt cover everything about Docker. But its not supposed to! Ive written the book to get you up to speed as quickly as possible while still spending the time to learn how it all fits together. If the book was 1,000 printed pages it would not help you get up to speed quickly!

However, I will add sections to the book if I think theyre important and fundamental enough. Please use the books feedback pages and hit me up on Twitter with ideas of what you think should be included in the next version of the book.