What is a container?

Now that you’ve run a container, what is a container? Simply put, a container is a sandboxed process on your machine that is isolated from all other processes on the host machine. That isolation leverages kernel namespaces and cgroups, features that have been in Linux for a long time. Docker has worked to make these capabilities approachable and easy to use. To summarize, a container:

• is a runnable instance of an image. You can create, start, stop, move, or delete a container using the DockerAPI or CLI.

• can be run on local machines, virtual machines or deployed to the cloud.

• is portable (can be run on any OS)

• Containers are isolated from each other and run their own software, binaries, and configurations.

What is a container image?

When running a container, it uses an isolated filesystem. This custom filesystem is provided by a container image. Since the image contains the container’s filesystem, it must contain everything needed to run an application - all dependencies, configuration, scripts, binaries, etc. The image also contains other configuration for the container, such as environment variables, a default command to run, and other metadata.

We’ll dive deeper into images later on, covering topics such as layering, best practices, and more.