Help me understand docker

General
1

Hi I am knew to docker and have a general understanding of what it is but I’m struggling to understand what it can and cant do and what a containers limitations are. So for example say I want to run my own hosting service that will allow users to spin up a docker contained instance of a web app such as WordPress. I understand that the container will contain everything that is needed to run Wordpress independently from another container but I’m confused in how this differers from a VPS. I currently run my own VPS which has Ubuntu installed along with a Lamp stack and a hosting control panel which I use to separate out clients hosting accounts. Each client can access their web space via FTP and can create and export databases etc all pretty standard stuff. So could a docker container be used to host an entire hosting control panel that could then be used to divide up hosting accounts and give clients access like I currently do on the VPS or does it not work like that? Say for example the client ordered a Wordpress account and I spin up a new docker container with wordpress ready to go for them. Does that docker container have the entire LAMP stack in it and therefore they can create unlimited mysql databases inside that docker container or does docker use the overall servers stack and there for if I had 100 separate wordpress containers I would be able to access all their databases from a single php myadmin?

You see where the confusion lies here?

2

The sort answer is containers behave a lot like virtual machines, but you shouldn’t run more than one application in each container, so you can’t use a single container to run an entire LMAP stack.

The medium length answer is to read the docs that explain what docker is and do some additional research on the underlying components and then on some docker topics like running wordpress in docker.

The lifelong learning answer is to just install docker after some of the above reading and start experimenting. You’ll learn 10x as fast actually doing it than asking the forums for stuff you could read anywhere online. Experimenting with docker is free and pretty safe, just dive in.

3

I have been reading a lot but didn’t really get it hence the post. I guess im trying to understand if docker is actually suitable for the kind of hosting Im talking about as in I want to offer the application as a service Saas, or if it just good for development environments

This guy seems to be doing exaclty what Im talking about with PHP Apache and mysql all in one container