What is Docker Engine?

In short Docker engine is the core part of Docker which creates and executes docker containers. There are some top orchestration tools provided by multiple vendors including Docker’s built-in orchestration. We will cover Orchestration in another article but for now lets concentrate on docker engine.

So If docker engine creates and executes docker containers then what is a docker container?

Docker Container

In short a docker container is an instance of docker image which can be an OS specific image with some configuration in it. These docker images are used to run specific services. For example you don’t want to install Nginx or Node.js services in your local machine and rather run them in some VM (virtual machine) for isolation. The issue with the VM is that it has an overhead of resources consumption, where as docker keeps your services isolated with lowest overhead.

Installing Docker Engine

Make sure you have sudo rights. This article assumes that you want to run docker as a normal user which is safe and good.

Docker Engine Installation in Debian Jessie

• Installing apt utilities and Docker Official GPG key

• Adding repository (AMD64 for 64 bit processors)

• Running apt-get update

• Install Docker engine community Edition

• Adding user to docker group

• Reboot or Log off

Testing Docker

and here is the output.